one, On the Highway of Life (1927, directed by Jäger and Ragnar Hartwall) is an interesting attempt to make some kind of a modern comedy. The year 1929 saw the premiere of the first two films produced by a minor company Fennica and directed by Valentin Vaala, who was yet to come one of the greatest directors of the golden years of Finnish cinema. When he started making the first one of these (Dark Eyes) he was only 17 years old, and his leading actor Theodor Tugai (later Teuvo Tulio) 14 years old. This film and its instant remake The Gypsy Charmer were new kind, passionate dramas with clearly oriental influences. Unfortunately only the latter one has remained; the filmmakers destroyed the only negative of Dark Eyes by throwing it to the sea, because they thought the remake was far superior. There were also enterprises to produce films outside the capital, but at least the films made in Viipuri and Oulu were too primitive to even premiere at Helsinki. No Tears at the Fair (1927) and The Man of Snowbound Forests (1928), two now lost films produced in Tampere by Aquila-Suomi and directed by Uuno Eskola were better attemptsl, at least according to their contemporaries. Nothing permanent production was left in Tampere, but one of Aquila's producers, painter Kalle Kaarna, proved to be a gifted director in his own right. His first film With the Blade of a Sword (1928) was boldly advertised as a neutral story about the painful civil war of 1918, and his second film, A Song about the Heroism of Labour (1929) introduced (although quite conventionally) a new kind of proletarian hero to the public. Unfortunately these films have also vanished for good. 1931–1933: The Coming of Sound The first experiments with sound were done by Lahyn-Filmi, a provincial company operating in Turku. The first full-length sound film with song and talk was Lahyn's Say It in Finnish (1931), directed by company's leader Yrjö Nyberg (later Norta). This lost film was more a collection of musical revue numbers than a feature. Suomi-Filmi transformed its production from silent to sound films during the same year. The first Finnish film with soundtrack was the company's Dressed Like Adam and a Bit Like Eve Too (1931), based on a popular play by Agapetus (pseudonym of Yrjö Soini). There was only music and some sound effects on the soundtrack, so