Director's comment
Literature is full of triangle dramas, but very few of them can beat Juhani Aho's "Juha" (1911) for deepness of emotions and understanding of all three parties. The story is straight and strong, yet full of detail, just waiting to be ruined by cinematic means.I had planned to film JUHA almost as long as we had planned to make a silent movie with composer Anssi Tikanmäki. One day we were clever enough to put the ideas together and the catastrophe was ready.
Afterwards I am not suprised that almost all efforts (except Tati's MON ONCLE) to make a silent film during the last decedes have somehow failed; the easyness of explaining all by words has polluted our storytelling to a pale shadow of original cinema.
We can never again make films like BROKEN BLOSSOMS, SUNRISE or QUEEN KELLY because since film started to gamble with mumbling and all that "hoochie-coochie" and fancy words, stories have lost their purity, cinema its essence: innocence.
