User Reviews

Traveltalks visits post-war Denmark. It starts with a pastoral examination of the country. Of course, there is no talk of the war. Then they examine the socialist governance in Denmark. I doubt it would be done this way today. Half the politics would rise up in protest that a plain travelogue would take a political stance. This would be immediately declared fake news or much, much worst. My main complaint is less political and more basic. This gives me nothing as a couch surfing traveler. Maybe it gives me a sense of the place but it's little more than a government pamphlet's worth. They certainly didn't deliver the pictures.

It takes a while for this Fitzgerald Traveltalk to get up to speed. The first couple of minutes are spent showing a field of grain that could be anywhere. After a while we see horses and farm workers, but it is not until we are shown shots of Copenhagen that it is visually clear we are in Denmark. This subtle method of inserting the viewer into Denmark may be too much for the viewer. In addition, we get to see platters of open-faced sandwiches. While this might have been noteworthy in 1953, it looks odd to my more modern eye.

Nonetheless, this is pretty much a standard Traveltalks film. We are assaulted with Fitzgerald's dry recitation of statistics and state support of the Lutheran church. Still, the pictures are well composed, if obviously staged.

Delightful Denmark (1953)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another nice entry in James A. FitzPatrick's "TravelTalks" series takes us to Denmark where we start off by learning about the farm land. We learn that the farmers grow about four-times the amount of food that the people actually need and that milk, butter, eggs, cheese and bacon are the most popular exports. We also learn that there are very few large farms so that more people can work and own part of the land. We see a few "yes" horses and learn how the unions keep prices at one rate and at times. From this point on we travel to Copenhagen where we learn about the popular Danish "open sandwich" and also visit a location that serves six-hundred different types of sandwiches. Finally, we learn that the old are taken care of free of charge after they retire and learn that pregnant mothers get free milk for a year and also free health care for the first year of the child's life. Overall, this is a pretty impressive short from the series as we get non-stop stories and best of all is that the majority of them are quite interesting. As usual the Technicolor really stands out and especially those opening shots of the farm lands.