Borrowing style and tone from French poetic realism, Roland af Hällström’s Houkutuslintu (US: The Callbird) is a Finnish fugitive noir that makes the most of its low budget to create a distinctive atmosphere spanning a busy nightclub, a dingy apartment, and a country farm. The “fugitive” in this case is a Helsinki prostitute named Marja Linnoila (Laila Jokimo) who’s compelled to flee the city and her criminal life after her pimp Jussi Lehtonen (Eero Leväluoma) attacks a business executive they were trying to fleece and shoves him out the window to his death. After Jussi is chased and shot by the police and presumed dead, a description of Marja circulates through the media, so she’s forced to board the next departing train where she strikes up a conversation with fellow passenger Tuulikki (Maire Hyvönen) and ends up taking shelter at the farm of Marja’s fiancée Antti Kaukonen’s (Eino Kaipainen). Immediately attracted to Marja, the pale, vampiric Antti soon invites her to stay on permanently as a farm worker and servant, a role she happily accepts. Later, just as they come close to consummating their relationship, her past shows up with a vengeance. There are a few detours from the dominant tension (for example, the scene of comic bedtime “seduction” is out-of-place and unfortunate), but the film paints with a noir brush overall, the hooker nightclub with the questionably talented singer groaning on stage a perfect specimen of the strange, dissonant world in which the story takes place.