Raven's End (Kvarteret Korpen) is a 1963 film from Sweden directed by Bo Widerberg.
The story is set in 1936 in the low-income Korpen district of Malmo. Anders, who has just turned 18, is a dreamy young man who has hopes of being a writer. His home life is not particularly happy. Anders' father is a drunkard, a man who once had a career as a salesman but lost it. Now he occasionally scrounges for odd jobs but spends most of his time trapped in a bottomless well of self-pity. Anders' mother resents her husband for his failure, but doesn't seem willing to do anything about it; she is left to provide a meager living for the family as a cleaning lady and by taking in laundry. Will Anders break free from this cycle of poverty and failure, or will he get stuck in Korpen like his parents?
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Anders' father, who is routinely drunk during the day. He says that he can't break out of his depression, and he doesn't even care about anyone else, because he is sealed off by "twenty years of aquavit".
- Awful Wedded Life: Anders' parents seem stuck with each other. His father is an alcoholic failure, his mother was unfaithful, and they have fallen into a sort of tired dislike.
- Broken Pedestal: Anders bursts into tears when he tells his dad about how he, Anders, used to admire his father, before his father was a drunken failure. Anders specifically remembers how his dad knew more about soccer than the other dads and explained the offsides rule to young Anders.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Anders' father, who used to be a salesman but is now a hopeless alcoholic failure. At the beginning of the film he's been reduced to distributing advertising fliers, and at the end he's walking around with a sandwich board advertisement.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: Heavy church bells are tolling during the funeral of a boy from the neighborhood who dies of appendicitis.
- High-Class Call Girl: Discussed Trope, as Sixtus says he wants to go to Paris specifically to get a "fur coat hooker".
- It Always Rains at Funerals: After a boy from the neighborhood dies of appendicitis because his family couldn't afford a doctor, his funeral is held in a driving rain.
- Kitchen Sink Drama: A working-class young man in Malmo has dreams of making something of himself, while his parents stew in an unhappy marriage.
- Match Cut: There's a cut from Anders' buddy Sixtus kicking a hat in the locker room, to Sixtus kicking a soccer ball in the game that follows.
- Most Writers Are Writers: The protagonist is a young man fresh out of school who has ambitions of making it as a writer.
- No Name Given: Anders' parents are referred to only as "Father" and "Mother".
- Parents as People: Anders' parents: a father who is a drunken failure, and a mother beaten down by years and disappointment. It seems Anders leaves, and abandons his pregnant girlfriend, because he does not want to be trapped like they are.
- P.O.V. Cam: A POV shot from Anders as he excitedly climbs stairs to his meeting with a publisher.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Anders' decision to run off to Stockholm at the end of the film is portrayed as a moment of liberation, with trumpets and strings playing triumphantly on the soundtrack. His mother's shame over Anders abandoning his pregnant girlfriend is just one more thing that Anders the would-be writer has to shrug off.
- Significant Background Event: The moment where Elsie tells Anders she is pregnant is shown in the background, without dialogue, while his father remains in the foreground, listening to the Olympics over the radio.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Anders confronts his mother with the story he just learned, about how she cheated on his father. His mother relates that one time, she scrimped and saved for enough money for a fancy cake for a party. Her husband not only came home drunk and ruined the party, he was so drunk that he sat in the fancy cake. Anders' mother then walked over to a neighbor's apartment and made a direct offer of sex, which the neighbor accepted.
- Wall Slump: The depression variant of this trope, as Anders' drunk father slumps along the wall to the ground after being so drunk that he had to be helped into the apartment.
- Write What You Know: In-Universe, as Anders says that he wrote about his family and the neighborhood because that's what he knows.
