Before there was Michael Jordan or Serena Williams, before there was Cher or Madonna, Hollywood had a female sports star on its hands who pretty much dictated what she wanted, when she wanted and how she wanted it, even more so than contemporaries Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. And, arguably, it was Sonja Henie‘s hits that kept a major movie studio, 20th Century Fox, afloat for years on end. Henie became one of the wealthiest stars of the late 1930s and 1940s and she did so by doing what no one had done before: ice skating on the big screen. That’s the intriguing scenario explored in Anne Sewitsky’s “Sonja: The White Swan” which had its international premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival following a release in Norway last month.
The Norwegian born Henie (Ine Marie Wilmann, a talent) is one of history’s greatest figure skating champions. She won three Olympic gold medals and was World Champion for 10 straight years, feats no other male or female skater have duplicated since. But, what she truly dreamed of was living in sunny Los Angeles and becoming a movie star after her “amateur” career ended. Following a proposition from touring entrepreneur and new Detroit Red Wings owner Arthur Wirtz (Malcolm Adams), Henie agrees to star in a touring ice skating show under her own name in the United States. In so doing she moves to LA where she puts on a spectacular performance that convinces legendary Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck (Aidan McArdle, huffing and puffing) to sign her to a four-picture deal.
What’s refreshing about Henie’s story is that she’s shown to be driving her own ambitions. Not only is she forcing Zanuck to do her bidding with one convincing argument after another, but she’s also making the decisions about what she does on and off the ice. She also randomly plucks the quiet Connie (Valene Kane, fine) out of a newspaper sales office to be her assistant just because there’s something she likes about her. It’s an impulsive decision that seems to be one of Henie’s key personality traits. Connie’s job in the film is to not only placate the superstar but also remind the audience every so often that, “Hey, that’s not gonna end well.”
As the movie progresses it becomes clear that the biggest threat to Henie’s ambitions isn’t her unbridled cockiness or an athlete’s greatest weakness, Father Time, but her own family. Henie has moved her parents and brother to America to support her, which is more about her inherent fear of being alone (something that’s not revealed until it simply doesn’t matter anymore). Their damage quickly piles up. Sonja’s father insists on “hiding” his daughter’s earnings in a Mexican bank safety deposit box instead of an American institution (why is never really made clear) and it’s obvious Sonja’s beloved brother Leif (Eldar Skar, subtlety not a strong suit) is bad news the moment we learn he can’t keep the family’s successful fur shop in Oslo afloat (imagine when Henie gives him money to invest in real estate!). Throw in a husband or two that are simply using Henie for her fame and fortune and you can easily see where the film’s narrative is heading. It’s that tragic rags to riches to rags story that hasn’t failed the history books yet. Of course, that assumes Henie’s story is tragic and, well, that’s factually debatable.
There have been a number of biopics that have played fast and loose with historical facts recently, and Sewitsky and writers Mette M. Bølstad and Andreas Markusson are no different. It doesn’t ignore Henie’s seeming ignorance to her interactions with Nazi Germany (at one point she drunkenly reminds Connie one of her films was among Hitler’s favorites), but there certainly isn’t enough context over just how troubling her interactions were. “White Swan” also basically ignores her athletic accomplishments (you learned more about her feats in this review than you will in the movie) and it stumbles in its third act by making the later days of her career worse than they actually turned out to be.
There is no denying that Sewitsky is a talent, however (her film “Happy Happy” won Sundance’s World Cinematic Jury prize in 2010), and she fashions a compelling perspective of Henie as a woman who knows her value as a celebrity and how to cash in on it. She uses Willman’s charismatic performance to depict Henie as a free spirit with seemingly no fear. Not of her family, not of the press ready to expose her liberal sexual affairs (an adult Henie would have loved the ’20s and ’70s) and certainly not of a younger generation of up and coming skaters. Sewitsky also drops in relatively modern pop music in numerous sequences to make sure the viewer understands that Henie wasn’t the stereotypical pushover starlet we might expect from the Hollywood studio system. She had power and knew how to use it. It’s a stylish flourish that often pops the film out of its period setting and predictable narrative.
“The White Swan” notably benefits from Sewitsky’s collaborations with cinematographer Daniel Voldheim, production designer Lina Nordqvist, costume designer Karen Fabritius Gram and ice skating choreographer Catarina Lindgren. The film’s skating sequences are often spectacular and truly convey why Henie was a star, even if it’s hard to miss the obvious stand-in for Wilmann on the ice. The movie musical recreations are actually so impressive you’ll be hard-pressed not to search out Henie’s original performances afterward.
Unfortunately, “Sonja” ends with a bit of a thud. There’s a long-gestating romance that is strangely underdeveloped, the fate of major figures who disappear are left to end cards and, awkwardly, Henie’s on-screen character arc seems to not actually, um, have a true arc. Sewitsky and her collaborators can create cinematic wonders, however, and it’s a tease that leaves you wondering what a more nuanced depiction of the White Swan’s life story could amount to. [C+]