Eureka!, out now

A frustrated newlywed visits a shaman who gives her a potion that makes her insatiable, but at a huge cost.

Erik Blomberg’s 1952 black and white fantasy has never looked clearer, thanks a to a beautiful new 4K restoration completed in 2017 by the National Audio-visual Institute of Finland. This movie is the perfect fodder for Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series, presenting obscurer movies in collector editions. I would guess that unless you are a film student you’re unlikely to know this Finnish export which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film.

But immaculate credentials and transfer aside, this is not something for the casual viewer, it really is one for the academic or lover of worldwide cinema. Even at 68 minutes this fable has its longeurs, and you frequently find yourself drifting, admiring the spectacular Lapland settings, the crisp snow brought into brilliant relief by the high definition black and white. Ultimately it’s a fairy tale with a moral, and the fate of shapeshifting Pirita’s (Mirjami Kuosmanen) white reindeer is pretty clear.

The release includes a commentary by critic and film historian Kat Ellinger, an essay by film journalist Amy Simmons – Religion, Pleasure, and Punishment: The Portrayal of Witches in Nordic Cinema – as well The Reindeer, Erik Blomberg s 1947 documentary short.

Verdict: A beautiful restoration of an important Finnish movie, film historians and aficionados of the outré will Lap it up (ho ho ho!) but this inevitably has a very limited appeal. 8/10

Nick Joy