Film / Att Angöra En Brygga

This is fine^note From left to right: Hans Furuhagen as Walter, Birgitta Andersson as Mona, and Lars Ekborg as Kalle

Lennart: “I’ve hurt myself both here and there, but other than that life is good.”

Att Angöra En Brygga (inconsistently translated as "To Go Ashore" or "Docking the Boat" in English language releases^note a literal translation would be something along the lines of "To dock [onto] a jetty") is a 1965 Swedish comedy film, directed by Tage Danielsson, with a script by him and Hans "Hasse" Alfredson.

In a cottage on Ensamholmen, a tiny island in the Baltic Sea, Berit (Monica Zetterlund) and Lennart (Gösta Ekman) are preparing a traditional Swedish crayfish party when they spot the sailboat carrying their four guests: Kalle (Lars Ekborg), Mona (Birgitta Andersson), Walter (Hans Furuhagen) and Director Ohlsson (Tage Danielsson). As it turns out, none of the crew know the faintest bit about sailing, and the only other people on the island are Berit's Fitness Nut mother Inez (Katie Rolfsen) and their misanthropic, gun crazy landlord Mr. Albert Garbo (Hans Alfredson.) Still, it's up to them to, well, dock the boat.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This was Tage Danielsson's second film and the biggest hit of his already respectable career, becoming a critical and commercial success and earning the director the 1966 Chaplin award. The film's main leitmotif also became a hit in its own right after being released as a song performed by Monica Zetterlund, With Lyrics by Tage Danielsson and Hans Alfredson. Since its relelase, the film has maintained its reputation as a comedy classic.

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Tropes:

• Alone with the Psycho: The rest of the cast’s interactions with Mr. Garbo become increasingly this as he undergoes Sanity Slippage. By the time Director Ohlsson arrives at the island, Garbo has resorted to going after both him and his tenants with a rifle, a throwing knife, and Good Old Fisticuffs.
• Angry Guard Dog: Mr. Garbo has one, who complicates Berit, Lennart, and Mona’s boat key heist, later keeps them from escaping their house, and chases after Director Ohlsson when he steals Garbo’s boat engine.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Played for Laughs. A metal barrel (containing Director Ohlsson) powered by a small engine collides with a speeding sailing vessel and not only managed to propel the boat backwards, but push it through a jetty, smashing both it and the boat to pieces.
  • It’s very unlikely that a bottle thrown into the Baltic sea would end up in the Riddarholmen Quay, as that would require it to float upstreams. Mind you, if not for that then we wouldn’t have gotten those opening shots of the inner city of Stockholm.
• Art Shift: The sausage fight scene between Mona and Walter is portrayed like a photo montage set to wacky music.
• Battering Ram: Berit attempts to use a metal bedframe as one to break out of the house. But all she really manages to do is accidentally hitting Lennart, hurting him even further.
• Battle Discretion Shot: The fight between Mr. Garbo and Inez is partially offscreen, as they end up in a closet from which she sends him flying. When he returns for more, she kicks him through the side of it.
• Black Comedy: While it’s undoubtedly a Downer Ending that the main cast are all reduced to stripped-to-the-bone skeletons, the fact that most of them are still posed in seated positions, with what is implied to be Kalle and Walter’s remains respectively standing up saluting and still holding onto his baloon is meant to add some levity to it all.
• Book and Switch: Played With. Walter is seen reading a Playboy magazine... secretly containing a Donald Duck comic.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: By the time outsiders arrive in the very last scene, the people who needed rescuing are all dead.
• Celebrity Crush: Mr. Garbo is apparently keeping correspondence with various Hollywood starlets, (and Cary Grant), including at least Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple and Ginger Rogers, but it is Esther Williams he plans to marry after moving there. He’s shown eating dinner with a photograph of Williams, which he talks to as though she was actually there.
• Chain of People: As shown on one of the film's posters (see the page image) Walter, Mona and Kalle pull off a horizontal version when pulling their boat toward a sea mark. Out-of-universe, this was achieved by having the actors laying on a carefully hidden rope.
• Chekhov's Gun: While fighting Inez, Garbo briefly falls into the hole in the floor made by his tenants during their earlier attempted escape.
• Chekhov's Skill: Inez’s karate training becomes quite useful by the end, where she uses it to fight off Mr. Garbo.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Mr. Garbo eventually shows that he does have a letter and a signed photograph from Esther Williams as “proof” of their relationship, and that he is quite rich, meaning that he might just have had a chance of starting a new life in Hollywood. Of course, for that he too would have had to get off the island first...
• Compilation Movie: Presumably not the case In-Universe, but on a meta level, the audio from the ”movie” Mr. Garbo is watching was in fact taken from two episodes of the show Hong Kong, starring Rod Taylor.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Framing Device showing a Message in a Bottle being brought to the Stockholm police, who immediately mount an emergency investigation, is filmed in black-and-white. Aside from the diegetic sounds, these scenes invoke a Silent Movie, with only one line of dialogue spoken.
• Delicious Distraction: During their heist, Lennart, Berit and Inez bring sausages to distract Mr. Garbo’s dog, and fishes to distract his cat. It works.
• Description Cut: Having just gotten a vision of Lennart and Berit making love while the latter’s mother looks on, Kalle and Mona defend their own interrupted cheating as mere revenge for whatever orgies are going on in the house. Cut to the real Lennart, Berit and Inez, who are doing nothing of the sort but simply trying to break out of the building.
• Double Vision: Used for some extra surrealism during the sausage fight, where — for all of one shot — Walter inexplicably faces off against two Monas.
• Dream Sequence: Kalle and Mona have a shared dream about their respective spouses cheating with each other in a white, limbo-like version of the cabin. When awaking, they both become convinced that it must have really happened, and use this as an excuse to cheat themselves. However, they end up being interrupted by the arrival of Walter.
• Eleven O'Clock Number: In one of the film's more serious scenes, most of the cast^note sans Director Ohlsson - who has been seperated from the others - and the antagonistic Mr. Garbo sing a septet cover of "The Story of the Heart" which serves this function, as it preceeds the action-filled climax.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: The bum in the opening just happens to find the distress message within view of the iconic Stockholm City Hall, (which incidentally implies that the bottle somehow floated upstreams!)
• Explosive Instrumentation:
  • The sailboat’s engine starts emitting tons of smoke and is then promptly thrown overboard.
  • After Mr. Garbo’s cabin falls apart, his TV just spontaneously explodes. This is what really sends Garbo over the edge, and he quickly starts chopping his boat up with an axe.
• Five-Aces Cheater: Parodied, Mona uses the classic “ace-in-the-sleeve-trick”... in a game of card solitaire!
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Parodied. When the ship carrying the booze gets stranded at sea, Lennart starts singing a drinking song and acting pretend-drunk while swinging a scoop of boiled water, as he really doesn’t have anything better to drink.
• Grappling-Hook Gun: Lennart, Berit and Inez construct one out of a dart gun, a roll of string, and a toilet roll dispenser. They use it to get their hands on Mr. Garbo’s boat keys during their heist.
• Honor Before Reason: Kalle vehemently refuses to use the boat engine because it’s a sailboat. Granted, it does blow up the moment somebody tries to use it...
• I Can't Hear You: Inez can’t hear her daughter Berit at all over her loud exercising music, illustrated by having Berit’s lines being muted for the audience as well.
• Implausible Deniability: Berit, Lennart and Inez deny being the people who broke into Mr. Garbo’s cabin... even though they’re the only other people on the island and Garbo got a pretty good look at the intruders. Unsurprisingly he doesn’t buy it and locks them up, intent on taking the matter to the police.
• Left the Background Music On: The violin music playing during the dream sequence turns out to be provided by Inez, her dream self apparently being a Shipper on Deck for Lennart and Berit.
• Lost at Sea: Director Ohlsson disappears from the plot after accidentally getting stuck on a drifting floating jetty and getting knocked unconscious. He returns later, when the jetty drifts ashore near Garbo’s cabin.
• Mood Whiplash: The film starts with a dramatic opening where a distress message is found and the police spring into action, heading towards an island. It then cuts to earlier, at the same island, where Lennart and Berit are preparing a pleasant party and welcoming the new arrivals... who utterly fail at carrying out the film’s titulatur docking, firmly establishing the movie as a wacky slapstick comedy.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • Mr. Garbo making TV dinner by... using his gas oven lighter like a gun, flinging butter into the pan, cutting down a sausage by throwing his hat at it and giving it a Blade Spam with his knife, violently crushing an egg and tossing away the shells, and ”cracking” his drink cabinet as though it was a safe.
  • After Garbo locks Lennart, Berit and Inez in their house, they can only talk to Kalle, Mona and Walter by shouting through the attic window. What follows is a mostly casual conversation... done entirely with No Indoor Voice.
• Nitro Boost: Mona and Walter eventually settle on mounting fireworks all around the sailboat. This does propel it forward, but they find it impossible to steer. Walter at least being absolutely plastered by this point probably doesn’t help.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Mr. Garbo, who essentially exists to provide our protagonists with a big, additional obstacle. His goals (enjoying his TV dinner, and eventually moving to Hollywood and marrying Esther Williams) are in no way connected to or even impeded by the goals of his tenants (reuniting for a crayfish party.) The conflict only starts because of him continually holding the Jerkass Ball and utterly refusing to help them in any way.
• Pyrrhic Victory: At the end of the film, Kalle, Mona and Walter finally make it to the island and are greeted by Lennart and Berit, but their sailboat is a stranded wreck, their house is burning down and the epilogue reveals that they all died shortly thereafter.
• Real Men Wear Pink: After his half-assed attempt to rescue Director Ohlsson, Kalle is lent some dry but tacky ladies clothes by Mona. Walter subsequently locks him for trying to assert his authority while wearing women’s pants. A double-mutiny and some Insane Troll Logic later, and the crew decides that wearing women’s pants is in fact a sign of authority.
• Running Gag:
  • Lennart’s Amusing Injuries, which lead to him getting covered in an increasing amount of bandages throughout the film.
  • Director Ohlsson being knocked unconscious or otherwise incapacitated.
• Sacred Hospitality: For our protagonists, these definitely apply to crayfish parties. Kalle, Mona and Walter treat Lennart starting to eat before their arrival as a vile betrayal, (with Mona in particular feeling downright traumatized and violated by it.) Nevermind that they’re stranded at sea. They get their revenge by indulging in their alcohol all by themselves, which makes their compatriots on the island furious.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Attempted. After catching his tenants trying to steal his boat, Mr. Garbo locks them into their house, telling them that he’s going to call the cops on them and then move to Hollywood to marry Esther Williams. Of course, he’s just as stuck on Ensamholmen as they are.
  • Kalle, following his Sanity Slippage, decides to just screw the crayfish party and sail to Jamaica instead, endlessly repeating the opening verse of ”Nisse ville sjöman bli” (Nisse wanted to become a sailor), where the eponymous character does the same. He ends up getting the ship stranded on Ensamholmen instead.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Both Berit and Lennart are familiar with the (fictional) film ”Mission in Hong Kong”, the latter knowing it by heart. This becomes convenient when they sync their heist to the film’s bridge demolition scene to mask the sounds of their break-in.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Lennart’s elaborate plan to to get Mr. Garbo’s boat keys. Turns out that Garbo has pulled the boat’s plug, and it quickly sinks.
• Shot in the Ass: Happens to Lennart, courtesy of Mr. Garbo. Later, he’s seen sitting on a plot of water to soothe the pain, eventually strapping a pillow to his posterior.
• Skewed Priorities: The prospect of getting his captain’s hat dropped into the sea is such that Kalle actually agrees to go down beneath deck to avoid it, allowing Mona to lock him in and commit mutiny.
• Small, Secluded World: Other than the opening, the entire film is set on the small island of Ensamholmen.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Director Ohlsson manages to do this to Mr. Garbo thanks to the thick fog, saving him from getting shot.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Most of the film is a fairly lighthearted slapstick comedy. Even in the climax, where the sailboat is stranded on the island, our protagonists are not seriously hurt. Then they all die in a Time Skip, with only their skeletons remaining to be found by their would-be rescuers. The End!
• Theme Tune Cameo: Inez plays the film’s leitmotif on the accordion to cheer up the stranded crew. A joyful dancing scene ensues.
• Toplessness from the Back: Berit disrobing in front of Lennart in the dream sequence is filmer like this.
• Total Party Kill: Aside from the people appearing in the Framing Device, none of the characters survive the events of the film.
• Trash the Set:
  • Mr. Garbo accidentally pulls down the walls of his own cabin while trying to drag his water-filled boat back onto the shore. It also somehow blows up his TV.
  • Inez and Mr. Garbo accidentally start a house fire during their fight, giving is the image of the archipelagic wooden house going up in flames.
• The Unintelligible: Mr. Garbo, who speaks almost entirely in incomprehensible rants.
• Voice for the Voiceless: When Mr. Garbo confronts Berit and her co-conspirators, she breaks the fourth wall to calmly “translate” Garbo’s rants — including the swearing — to the Real Life audience. (Lennart and Inez mostly seem to understand Garbo just fine, for their part.)
• Walk, Don't Swim: Berit comes up with the idea of having Director Ohlsson steal Mr. Garbo’s boat engine by walking on the ocean floor with a barrel over his head. A relatively realistic example as the director is keeping his head above the surface and merely using the barrel as a disguise, while having metal weights strapped to his feet. The plan works until he accidentally turns on the engine itself after removing it, sending him out to sea.
• We Need a Distraction: Besides the distraction already provided by Mr. Garbo’s TV viewing, Mona and Walter launch a firework (at the cue of Inez’s light signals) as a temporary one.

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