Cinematographer Sven Nykvist, R.I.P.

From Radio Sweden...

Cinematographer Sven Nykvist Dead




Multi-Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sven Nykvist is dead at 83.

Sven Nykvist is best known for his Oscar-winning collaboration with legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, but during his long career he also worked with many international film directors such as Louis Malle (Pretty Baby), Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), Bob Fosse (Star 80), Nora Ephron (Sleepless In Seatle), Woody Allen (Another Woman, Crimes & Misdemeanors), Richard Attenborough (Chaplin) and fellow Swede Lasse Halstrom (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape).



Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for cinematography for Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (Viskingar och Rop, 1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1982).

Aside from his work as a cinematographer, Nykvist was also active as director, screenwriter and producer.

Sven Nykvist was born to missionary parents in southern Sweden in 1922. He studied photography at Stockholm's School of Photography and began his professional career at the Sellman Film Company in the late 1930s. In 1941, Nykvist began work as first cameraman at the Swedish Film Studios, Sandrews.

He began his collaboration with Ingmar Bergman, one of the most artistically successful in film history, in 1953 on the film Sawdust and Tinsle (Gycklarnas Afton).

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyh...;artikel=947250

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Sven and Bergman collaborated on twenty-two features and television projects: The Naked Night (1953), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1962), The Silence (1963), All These Women (1964), Persona (1966), Shame (1968), Hour of the Wolf (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969), "The Rite" (1969), "Faro Document" (1970), The Touch (1971), Cries & Whispers (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), "The Magic Flute" (1975), Face to Face (1976), The Sepent's Egg (1977), Autumn Sonata (1978), From the Life of the Marionettes (1980), Fanny & Alexander (1982) and "After the Rehersal" (1984). He also shot two movies directed by one of Bergman's favorite actresses, Liv Ullmann, when she helmed Kristin Lavransdatter (1995) and Private Confessions (1996).

Nykvist and Woody Allen made four films together: Another Woman (1988), Crimes & Misdemeanors (1989), the "Odepus Wrecks" segment of New York Stories (1989) and Celebrity (1998).

Some of his career highlights not mentioned in the brief obituary in the post above are Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice (1986), Caspar Wrede's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970), Louis Malle's Black Moon (1975), Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Norman Jewison's Agnes of God (1985), Frank Pierson's King of the Gypsies (1978), Alan J. Pakula's Starting Over (1979) and Polanski's The Tenant (1976).


The only of the movies Sven directed himself that I've seen is very good: Oxen (1991) starring Stellan Skarsgård, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann.


Quite an amazing career. R.I.P., Sven.

Thanks for the thread, Holden....

Nykvist and Bergman developed the "shadowless light" together. I belive they first began to use this technique in Winter Light, which matched the theme perfectly. As in several of Bergman's films the question of God's existence is central in the film. And God is as absent as the shadows....

As Holden said, the collaboration between Nykvist and Bergman is extraordinarily successful and they've created so many memorable cinematic moments together. Cries and Whispers is perhaps my favourite in terms of cinematography.... Amazing.

R.I.P. Sven....

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

As one reporter here pointed out, the range of Nykvist's craftmanshift is quite remarkable. If you've become familiar with his work in films like Winter Light, where the cinematography is almost ugly, you might be surprised that it's the one and the same cinematographer behind films like Fanny & Alexander or Something to Talk About.

This is horrible. One of my favorite cinematographers of all-time.

R.I.P Sven Nykvist