In 1932 Svensk Filmindustri, the leading production company, established a division for the production of short films, mainly documentaries. Additionally they also supported the production of two experimental films, which became the only professionally supported experimental film output in Sweden during the 1930’s. One of the films produced was Gösta Hellström’s Tango, a short drama about a cheating woman who gets swindled of her valuable jewelry. While the film has interesting visual elements, the use of the soundtrack is the most intriguing aspect. Hellström was sceptical of ’the synchronic devil’, as he put it, and wanted to get away from a conventional naturalism in the soundscape. This resulted in the film portraying the dialogue in a manner where you never see the person speaking, but rather the person listening, creating a bizarre syncopation of the soundtrack. Apart from this, the film also became easier to dub for an international audience, serving both a practical and an aesthetical purpose.

Hellström sadly passed away in tubercolosis a mere month after the premiere of Tango, mourned by many as a great loss for Swedish cinema as he was considered a sparkling hope for Swedish film. He had a great interest and love for cinema and film theories and can be seen as a representative of early cinephilia. Having met Eisenstein in Moscow and assisted Gustaf Molander on En Natt, a film where he has been said to have a great influence on its ’Soviet style’, his interest of the montage theories and the way they could be applied had only started to take form. Tango is just an example of what could have been a long and promising career as a filmmaker, a notable exception from the contemporary tendencies in Swedish film production. Instead, Hellström’s film was rather aligned with international currents in the avant-garde, seeking reality and documentary depictions as well as stylistic innovation, preferably in an urban setting.