Sweet little comedy, dry as a bone, about a train engineer named Odd Horten (Baard Owe) – and for the record, "Odd" is not an odd name in Norway, where this film was made – and the mild trouble he gets into after he retires from his job. Hamer gave us the similarly gentle Kitchen Stories and seems to have a fondness for the archetypal elderly Norwegian bachelor, stoic and silent but graced with a soft good humor.
Lovingly shot and rich with detail, O'Horten may be the sort of film you could take your granny to (although there is mild profanity and even fleeting nudity), but somewhere among its episodic adventures is a quiet sadness about growing old and feeling left behind by the rest of the world. Worth a view, especially on a hot summer day: the story takes place during a typically freezing Norwegian winter.