Finland used as location for international films before
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During the years of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union itself was off limits to Western film production companies depicting the USSR in a negative light, a number of films had scenes set in Soviet cities shot in Finland - mainly Helsinki, with the Uspenski Cathedral and other Orthodox churches providing a Slavic atmosphere.
The Kremlin Letter by John Houston (1970) had extensive shooting in Finland.
David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965) had scenes shot both in Helsinki and in rural parts of Finland.
The spy thriller Telefon (1977) by Don Siegel again had Helsinki serve as the backdrop for Moscow in the opening scenes, in which a KGB agent played by Charles Bronson gets his instructions for a mission to the United States.
Finland was extensively used in by Warren Beatty in Reds (1981), which had many scenes shot in Helsinki: part of the film, on the life of radical American journalist John Reed, is actually set in Finland, but Helsinki also plays the part of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Some parts of White Nights, in which Mikhail Baryshnikov plays an exiled Russian dancer, were shot in Helsinki, although the 1985 film also contains footage actually filmed in Russia.
William Hurt played a Soviet police officer investigating a murder case in Gorky Park (1983) in which Helsinki again doubled for Moscow. During the production Helsinki residents would come up against signs and storefronts in Russian. Even some of the scenes that were set in Sweden were actually shot in Finland.
Helsinki played itself in the spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain (1967) featuring Michael Caine. Exteriors set in Riga, the capital of Soviet Latvia, were shot in Porvoo.
The Eagle Has Landed (1976) also starred Michael Caine. The opening sequence, set in Nazi-occupied Poland, was shot in the railway yard of Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland.
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Helsingin Sanomat
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