Friends,
Whilst the film "Kitchen Stories" is set in Sweden, the director is
Norwegian (one Bent Hamer from a town called Sandefjord, about two
hours drive South from Oslo). The original title (which I prefer)
translates as "Hymns from a Kitchen".
The story is one thing, more interesting is part of the basis in
reality of the film: back in the fifties, when Sweden was at its most
hallucinatory social democratic, someone noted that with the advent of
various modern household equipment - washing machines, hoovers,
mixmasters etc. - housewives had less work to do. In order to make
more efficient use of their time, the government commissioned a study
of the work of housewives - a proper time-and-motion one counting
number steps between the sink and the oven, for example - and used
this to design new types of kitchens. Basically, it was an attempt to
recognise the kitchen as a proper workplace and organise it
accordingly, a very old fashioned but somehow nice attempt to
recognise and respect the home maker. Of course it didn't work...the
space shrank (not efficient to have a big kitchen), the husbands, kids
and other hangers-on (neighbours) kicked out (cluttering the place),
no more was the kitchen allowed to be the social centre of the home
and - surprise - the poor women became ever more lonely out there and
increasingly irritated at being treated as unpaid servants...no wonder
they hit upon the idea of getting a proper job instead, after which it
has all been down hill....:) |
