Rasmus and the Vagabond

Rasmus is nine and runs away from the orphanage. He has given up on being adopted; the people who come always choose the little girls. On the road he meets a tramp who plays the accordion and sings and calls himself Paradise Oskar. The two of them set off together, and the world starts to look like somewhere a person could live. Olle Hellbom made the film in 1981 from Astrid Lindgren's novel. What is always true of Lindgren's children is true here: the boy is not an object of pity but somebody making his own decisions. Allan Edwall plays Oskar. It is Swedish children's cinema at its best, holding sadness and delight in the same frame.