Sven Nykvist

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Sven Nykvist on the cover of his book Vördnad för ljuset. 1997.

Sven Vilhem Nykvist (3 December 1922 – 20 September 2006) was a Swedish cinematographer. He worked on over 120 films, but is known especially for his work with director Ingmar Bergman. He won Academy Awards for his work on two Bergman films, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) in 1973 and Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) in 1983.

His work is generally noted for its naturalism and simplicity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest cinematographers of all time.

[edit] Biography

Nykvist was born in Moheda, Kronobergs län, Sweden. His parents were Lutheran missionaries who spent most of their lives in the Belgian Congo, so Nykvist was raised by relatives in Sweden and saw his parents rarely. His father was a keen amateur photographer of African wildlife, which may have sparked Nykvist's interest in the visual arts.

A keen sportsman in his youth, his first cinematic effort was to film himself taking a high jump so as to improve his technique. After a year at the Municipal School for Photographers in Stockholm, he entered the Swedish film industry at the age of 19.

In 1941, he became an assistant cameraman at Sandrews studio, working on The Poor Millionaire. He moved to Italy in 1943 to work at the Cinecittà, returning to Sweden two years later. In 1945, aged 23, he became a fully-fledged cinematographer, which his first solo credit on The Children from Frostmo Mountain.

He worked on many small Swedish films for the next few years, and spent some time with his parents in Africa filming wildlife, footage which was later released as a documentary entitled In the Footsteps of the Witch Doctor (also known as Under the Southern Cross).

Back in Sweden, he began to work with the legendary director Ingmar Bergman in 1953 on Sawdust and Tinsel (released in the US as The Naked Night). He was one of three cinematographers to work on that movie, the others being Gunnar Fischer and Hilding Bladh.

Nykvist would eventually become Bergman's full-time cinematographer and push the director's work in a new direction, away from the theatrical look of his earlier films. He worked as sole cameraman on Bergman's Oscar-winning films The Virgin Spring in 1959 and Through a Glass Darkly in 1960. He revolutionised the way we see close ups in Bergman's Persona in 1966.

After working with other Swedish directors, including Alf Sjöberg on The Judge (1960) and Mai Zetterling on Loving Couples (1964), and then worked in the US and elsewhere, on Richard Fleischer's The Last Run (1971), Louis Malle's Black Moon (1975) and Pretty Baby (1978), Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), Jan Troell's Hurricane (1979), Bob Rafelson's version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Agnes of God (1985); Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992), Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).

Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two of his movies, Cries and Whispers (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982), both of which were Bergman films. He was also nominated for a Cinematograhy Oscar for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), and in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for The Ox (1991), in which he directed Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman.

He won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his work on The Sacrifice (1986), the last film of the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. He was the first European cinematographer to join the American Society of Cinematographers, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 1996.

He wrote three books, including Curtain Call in 1999.

His wife, Ulrika, died in 1982. Nykvist's career was brought to a sudden end in 1998 when he was diagnosed with aphasia, and he died in 2006, aged 83.

He is survived by his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist, who directed his first film, Woman on the Roof, in 1989 and directed a documentary about his father, Light Keeps Me Company, 1999.