THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

STOMPA & CO

Title: Stompa & Co
Year of release: 1962
Director: Nils-Reinhardt Christensen
Country of Production: Norway
Principal Boy Actors: Several boys, of whom the most important are Rolf Kirkvaag Jr. as Stompa and Knut Eide as his sidekick Bodø.
Genre: Comedy
Length: 1 hr 31 min
Language: Norwegian
Availability: Available as digital file with optional English subtitles

Synopsis
Stompa starts at a new boys' school, Langåsen in Stakavik, where he finds himself in various, mostly harmless, misadventures.

In the novel on which this film was based (see below) the boys are all around 10 or 11, but the film has aged them up a little, and Stompa himself is a surprisingly well-developed adolescent of about 14. Gisle Straume completely steals the show as the hapless Tørrdal (the equivalent of Mr. Wilkins in the novel).

This film was followed by three further Stompa movies, Stompa, selvfølgelig! (Stompa, Of Course!, 1963), Stompa forelsker seg (Stompa Falls in Love, 1965), and Stompa til Sjøs! (Stompa to the Sea, 1967), but in each of these follow-ups Rolf Kirkvaag is replaced by Ole Enger as Stompa. (There is no mention of any of the actors in Stompa & Co, or any of the Stompa series of movies, in the Holmstrom volume.)

Source material
Based on Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings Goes to School (1950), which was the first of the 'Jennings' series of school novels. When the novels were translated into Norwegian, the name 'Jennings' was replaced by 'Stompa', and Darbishire – Jennings' sidekick in the novels – became Bodø. The scene in the film in which Darbishire learns to swim by falling into the pool by accident is drawn from a later novel, According to Jennings (1954).

Below, left: front of dust jacket of first edition of source novel (Collins, 1950). Below, right: Jennings and his schoolmates, as imagined by Val Biro (illustration from Jennings Sounds the Alarm, the radio play adaptation of Jennings Goes to School, published by David Schutte, 1999).

     

Production photo

Publicity photo, showing (l-r) Knut Eide as Bodø, Gisle Straume as Tørrdal, and Rolf Kirkvaag Jr. as Stompa

Screenshots