Teuvo Tulio has been discussed as a studio-era auteur since the 1980s, when his films were being rediscovered. His fame peaked at the turn of the millennium, as his films became widely available. Tulio's passionate films, most of which were independent productions, are often experienced as more personal and idiosyncratic than those of his colleagues working on more conventional lines for the big studios Suomi-Filmi and Suomen Filmiteollisuus, Valentin Vaala and Hannu Leminen being good examples. In the 1930s and 1940s, which were Tulio's heyday, critics discussed him as an inimitable filmmaker whose film style was exceedingly cinematic. ‘One is always accustomed to expect something special from Teuvo Tulio. He is a man of audacious deeds who has walked his own path as an artist,’ one reviewer argued. In the 1950s he was either forgotten or scorned, as passionate melodramas relying on old genre conventions came to be seen as clunky and old-fashioned. Another strand of the contemporary auteur discussion concerns the stylistic and thematic coherence of Tulio's works. It has even been argued that his oeuvre is homogeneous to the extent that it is internationally unique. Today Tulio is celebrated in Finland for both the idiosyncrasy and the coherence of his oeuvre. However, the quality of his films remains a matter of debate.

Remarkably, as celebrated as Tulio's style was and is, it remains largely unstudied; what we have at best are impressionistic observations, not a systematic examination. By providing a quantitative and contextualised analysis of shot lengths in Tulio's cinema, this chapter will enhance our understanding of his use of stylistic means. The analysis will reveal whether there are significant changes in Tulio's style and whether these amount to discernible trends over his career. The results will be compared to film historical data with the purpose of examining how Tulio's style relates to cinematic styles of the past and those of his contemporaries. What follows is not a comprehensive analysis of Tulio’s film style, but one that provides insights into its nature and development. In his autobiography, Tulio mentions that The Fight over the Heikkilä Mansion, the now-lost film that was his directorial debut, ‘contained lots of short flashes instead of long scenes shot from one side’.