Review of “Röd sol över Nobels oljefält” (2000)
Seen in 2019.
The history of the Nobel family oil business at Baku, which laid part of the foundation for the Nobel Prize. Engineer Axel Blomgren arrives at a late stage, in 1912, and sees the Russian Revolution.
Extremely dry. A disinterested narrator quotes letters from the 1800s over panoramas and portraits from the 1910s. They don’t make ’em like this anymore, even at SVT. Even so, history is brought to life, particularly the horrific working conditions of the contemporary trade in “naphtha”. People atop mountains of oil drums before the tanker was invented, massive fires among the hundreds of dense towers, and men toiling away in black torrents across the mud.