fredrikgunerius Review of Man on the Roof

Man on the Roof (1976)

A documentarian style, modern camerawork and feverish action sequences

[8/10 · 21 December 2023]

This police procedural, the third in a long series of adaptation of Sjöwall/Wahlöö's novels about police detective Martin Beck, was the most expensive Scandinavian film ever at the time of production. In an international context, however, this is still a low-budget movie, which makes its gritty realism and exhilarating action all the more impressive. Mannen på taket presents Stockholm's police force as well-trained and rather unprepared at the same time. And yes, history has shown that this is a rather accurate description of Scandinavian police in general. The story is centered around the atypical police protagonist Beck (Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt), whose main assets are that he is thorough and unbiased - arguably two important skills to have in this profession - but which hardly had been symbolic in an action movie context. Otherwise, Beck is both physically unfit, not particularly quick-witted, and seemingly not an expert marksman. He needs help from all his colleagues in order to solve this case, and combined with Bo Widerberg's (Elvira Madigan) documentarian style, modern camerawork and feverish action sequences, this gives Mannen på taket an unprecedented realism, and not only by 1970s Swedish standards.