Titled Narvik, Hitler’s First Defeat, the Norwegian film just started streaming online a few weeks ago in the United States, even though by some accounts, the movie was released in 2022.

Billed by Wikipedia as a historical film of the battles of Narvik from April to June of 1940, the movie is clearly a dramatization with elements of fiction padding the historical accounts to make the film more audience

Friendly and relatable.  The story starts by showing us life in a small town on a waterway inlet whose existence is threatened by its strategic location.  Narvik in Norway has turned into a crucial shipping nexus coveted by European powerhouses who are already aligned on opposite sides of the budding Second World War conflict.

Was the Monarchy of Norway at fault in allowing the city of Narvik to throw open the gauntlet for both Germany and Great Britain to come loading on its shores?  While the director and screenwriters make it ample clear that either greed or over reaching ambitions could have precipitated unknown variables behind the scenes, the introduction frames the background political and economic activities as motivated by a desire for prosperity for a small and remote village acting as the broker for an extremely valuable commodity for then weapons technologies and empire armorers.

In brief, conflict was afoot and the city with the “gunpowder” was soon to become a hot pressure point ready to explode at any moment.

And explode it did, far away from the bluster, glamour and power of Washington DC, London and Berlin, or even Oslo with director Erik Skjoldbjaerg moving his leading actors through small intimate lives played with much conviction by Kristine Hartgen as Ingrid Tofte and Carl Martin Eggsbø as Corporal Gunnar Tofte a very young couple who are wed, in love and whose marriage is at risk of being torn apart by the invisible forces rapidly pitting Europe towards a bloodbath.

For those of our readers who manage to confuse Norway with the Netherlands, Norway is one of three large northernmost Scandinavian countries that arch over Europe, Russia and share the North Sea with the United Kingdom (Britain).  Norway is part of the land mass comprising Sweden (its neighbor) and Finland (bordering Russia and currently in the headlines due to its decision to join NATO and avert a Ukrainian-style crisis).

Norway is within close proximity to Denmark, Luxemburg, all of whom are separate countries that are oftentimes confused one for another.

Germany, Poland, France and the UK are all within a stone throw of Norway connected via the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

While this is a modest production by American blockbuster standards like Pearl Harbor (2001) and Dunkirk (2017) it remains a very ambitious and massive effort for Norway and the Nordisk Film Co. a unit of Denmark-based Egmont Media.

Most moviegoers are familiar with the assassination of Duke Ferdinand as the spark that lit the First World War (recently fictionalized in 2021’s The King’s Man).  This movie essentially strives to amplify information on the until now obscure spark that lit the Second World War – in the harbor of Narvik.

Director Skjoldbjaerg  and Cinematographer John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen take us through the inner streets and outskirts of Narvik and on its waterways,

With beautiful camerawork giving us an authentic feel for the time and place, showing the actual meeting where the British and the German ambassadors were unable to keep their governments’ ambitions in check and threw wide open the gauntlet of war.

We are shown a snowbound harbor village quickly coming to grasp with what happened and mobilizing its tiny militia in anticipation of the worst.  The Norwegian government sends a platoon of Norwegian soldiers to bolster the local militia but that may be woefully underserved for what is to unfold in the weeks ahead.

The heart of this movie revolves around a young married couple, Gunnar and Ingrid.  He is conscripted with the army and she works at a small hotel.  For the majority of the scenes, both Kristine Hartgen and Carl Eggsbø manage to pull it off without a hitch.

There is definite warmth and intimacy by taking the viewer through the lens of this couple. There are no sparks or sexual electricity but there is definitely warmth as we look at Narvik taken over by the drumbeats of war. 

The Nazis arrive and proceed to make a few changes here and there and then more changes and eventually we see how an independent Norwegian city becomes prisoner in the grip of Germany’s occupying army. 

Ingrid is forced to work as a translator to the German military leadership and on many occasions uses her role to secure information for the budding resistance – which recalls so many movies and TV shows (Hogan’s Heroes) where the French Resistance played a similar role against Germany.

In fact one of the more surprising elements of this film is the extent to which the movie goes to portray the impact of the relief military action from the Polish and French battalions that kick off the battle to defeat the Germans, while British destroyers in the harbor pound their positions.

In contrast with big movies, the edge-of-your- seat tension and threat for wholesale population extermination is absent from this film, such as the bombing of London or Berlin, or the 2001 big budget ghost city of Stalingrad in Enemy at The Gates.  The film by its nature cannot convey the density and scale of drama for big cities and capitols on fire.

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