Heaven and Hell (1969), originally titled Himmel og helvete, is a Norwegian drama directed by Øyvind Vennerød and written by Vennerød and physician Victor Borg. Sigrid Huun and a young Lillebjørn Nilsen star as Eva and Arne, two seemingly well-adjusted teenagers from comfortable Oslo homes whose curiosity about cannabis develops into an increasingly disastrous involvement with drugs. Their search for more brings them into contact with the dealer Zatek, played by Per Tofte, and a nightlife far removed from their sheltered upbringing. Intended as a serious warning about the emerging drug culture of the late 1960s, the film was controversial even when it was released and has since acquired a very different reputation as one of Norway’s best-known cult films, not least because of its dramatically exaggerated depiction of how quickly experimentation supposedly leads to addiction and ruin. The period atmosphere is strengthened by Egil Monn-Iversen’s soundtrack and appearances by musicians including Inger Lise Rypdal, Terje Rypdal and Jan Garbarek.
Heaven and Hell (1969) was filmed largely on location in Oslo, and more than half a century later it offers an unusually vivid glimpse of the Norwegian capital at the end of the 1960s. Vigeland Sculpture Park is one of its most recognisable locations: Eva and Arne are seen near the Monolith early in the film, and later return after smoking cannabis, running among the sculptures and playfully imitating their poses. The film also ventures into Oslo’s contemporary counterculture. The fictional Club 13, where Zatek operates and Inger Lise Rypdal performs accompanied by musicians including Terje Rypdal and Jan Garbarek, was filmed at the real Club 7. At the time, Club 7 occupied Restaurant Kongen in Frognerkilen and was one of Oslo’s most important alternative cultural meeting places. Slottsparken, the park surrounding the Royal Palace, is used when Eva and Arne encounter members of the city’s hippie scene, while other sequences move through residential streets and central Oslo, preserving the trams, cars, buildings and street life of the city in 1969. As the characters move away from their comfortable west-end surroundings and deeper into the drug milieu, the changing Oslo locations become part of the film’s deliberate contrast between their orderly beginning and the increasingly bleak world they enter.
Vigeland Sculpture Park
Vigeland Sculpture Park appears in Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, The Snowman, Himmel og helvete, Oslo, 31. august, Elling, and many more.