Theodor Antonius Tugai (23 August 1912 – 8 June 2000), better known as Teuvo Tulio, was a Finnish film director and actor. Beginning his career as an actor at the end of the silent era, Tulio turned to directing and producing in the 1930s. His films are noted for their extremely

melodrama A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...

tic style.Village Voice: BAM Samples Finland's Teuvo Tulio
/ref>"How did Theodor Tugai turn into Teuvo Tulio?" at Embassy of Finland, Riga
/ref>The Auteurs: The Strange Loves of Teuvo Tulio
/ref>

Biography

Tulio was born as Theodor Antonius Tugai to a Turkish- Polish father named Aleksander Tugai and a Persian- Latvian mother named Helena Garschin in Rēzekne, in the

Vitebsk Governorate Vitebsk Governorate (, ) was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with the seat of governorship in Vitebsk. It was established in 1802 by splitting Belarusian Governorate and existed until 1924. Today most ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(present-day Latvia). His mother was an 18-year-old aspiring ballerina when he was born. His parents' marriage was brief, and he spent the early part of his childhood in rural Latvia with his grandparents while his mother pursued a career as a ballerina in St. Petersburg. After his mother married a Finnish man named Alarik Rönnqvist, she sent for him to move to Helsinki in 1922, when he was ten years old. The family settled in the Katajanokka neighborhood of

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

. The move was not easy, however, for a boy accustomed to rural life. Theodor spoke Latvian, Russian and German, but was unable to speak Finnish and Swedish, which were spoken in Helsinki. Other children taunted him for his appearance, due to his mixed-ethnic heritage, and he later recalled that was involved in many physical altercations. In his teens, he befriended Valentin Vaala, three years older, after they met at an ice rink. Both were students at Helsinki's Russian-language Tabunov School and both were avid cinema goers who were fans of

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

and adventure films. At age fourteen, Tugai was the star of his Vaala's film ''Mustat silmät'' (Black Eyes), which was completed in 1929. Due to his "exotic" appearance, the young Tugai was sometimes referred to as Finland's answer to

Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor who starred in several well-known sile ...

. In 1936 he changed his name to the more Finnish Teuvo Tulio. His first work as director was the 1936 film ''Taistelu Heikkilän talosta'' (Fight over the Heikkila Mansion), starring Regina Linnanheimo. Linnanheimo would become Tulio's lifelong companion, though the two were never married. She acted as the leading lady in many of his films and co-wrote the screenplays for six of his features, including his last film, 1973's '' Sensuela''. Linnanheimo wrote the screenplay to ''Rikollinen nainen'' (The Crooked Woman) and to ''Olet mennyt minun vereeni'' (You've Gone in My Blood). Altogether, Tulio directed 15 feature films, three of which were destroyed in a fire in 1959. Parts of two of the films have been found in 2007 and in 2015.

Later influence and reputation

Tulio's films were an influence on the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, whose admiration brought the filmmaker international attention later in his life. In 2008 and 2009, short retrospectives of his work were held in the United States at the

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a multi-arts center in Brooklyn, New York City. It hosts progressive and avant-garde performances, with theater, dance, music, opera, film programming across multiple nearby venues. BAM was chartered in 18 ...

and the Pacific Film Archive. Covering the former for the '' Village Voice'', film critic J. Hoberman wrote: "At once arty and artless, stark and fulsome, Cine Tulio is ''characterized'' by an exaggerated emotional intensity and an equally primal lack of self-consciousness ... His movies are desperate and insistent, sometimes clumsy but never less than forceful. Tulio's strenuous lyricism allows the objective correlative to run wild." In a brief essay on the filmmaker for the English-language film website The Auteurs, Anna Bak-Kvapil referred to Tulio's work as "spectacles of suffering and sex," writing: "His style can be Eisensteinian, with expressionistic montages of the shining faces of the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian or a . Marxist ph ...

intercut with kittens, crucifixes, or half-smoked cigarettes, but he adores Hollywood, mimicking in his own over-enthusiastic way, Cukor, Lubitsch and Von Sternberg."

Filmography

Director

* ' (''Fight over the Heikkila Mansion'', 1936), a part of a copy found in 2007 * ' (''Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young'', 1937), a part of a copy found in the archives of La Cinémathèque Franҫaise in 2015 * ' (''Temptation'', 1938), all copies destroyed in fire in 1959 * '' The Song of the Scarlet Flower'' (''Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta'', 1938) * '' Vihtori ja Klaara'' (''Victor and Clara'', based on the comic strip "Bringing up Father", 1939) * '' In the Fields of Dreams'' (''Unelma karjamajalla'', 1940) * ' (''Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit'', 1944) and its Swedish-language version '' Sådan du ville ha mig'' (1944) * '' Cross of Love'' (''Rakkauden risti'', 1946) and its Swedish-language version '' Kärlekens kors'' (1946) * '' Restless Bood'' (''Levoton veri'', 1946) and its Swedish-language version '' Oroligt blod'' (1946) * ' (''In the Grip of Passion'', 1947) and its Swedish-language version '' Olof – forsfararen'' (1947) * ' (''The Rapids of Hell'', 1949) and its Swedish-language version '' Forsfararna'' (1949); co-directed with Roland af Hällström * ' (''The Crooked Woman'', 1952) * '' Mustasukkaisuus'' (''Jealousy'', 1953) and its Swedish-language version '' Två kvinnor'' (alternatively ''Kvinnorna på forsgården'', 1953) * ' (''You've Gone into My Blood'', 1956) * ' (''In the Beginning Was an Apple'', 1962) * '' Sensuela'' (1973)

Actor

* ''Mustat silmät'' (1929) as Mustalaispäällikkö Eb-Anzio * ''Mustalaishurmaaja'' (1929) as Manjardo * ''Laveata tietä'' (1931) as Antti Larto alias Anton Lardozo * ''Erämaan turvissa'' (1931) as Lappalainen * ''Sininen varjo'' (1933) as Joel Orma, 'Sininen overall' * ''Fredløs'' (1935) as Paavo (final film role)

References

External links

* *
"How did Theodor Tugai turn into Teuvo Tulio?" at Embassy of Finland, Riga
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tulio, Teuvo 1912 births 2000 deaths People from Rēzekne People from Rezhitsky Uyezd Finnish film directors Finnish film editors Finnish film producers Finnish male film actors Finnish people of Iranian descent Finnish people of Latvian descent Finnish people of Polish descent Finnish people of Turkish descent Latvian emigrants to Finland Latvian film directors Latvian film producers Latvian male actors Latvian people of Polish descent Latvian screenwriters 20th-century Finnish screenwriters 20th-century Finnish male actors 20th-century Latvian male actors