“Light gives me a feeling of spiritual atmosphere”
““The truth always lies in the character’s eyes,” Nykvist says. “It is very important to light so the audience can see what’s behind each character’s eyes.”
Nykvist says that in the beginning of his relationship with Bergman, he focused on a seminal idea. “I learned that there are types of lighting you can use to create an ambiance, “he says. “There’s a single sentence in The Magic Lantern (Bergman’s book) which expresses that concept: ‘Light: the gentle, bare, dreamlike, living, dead, clear, misty, hot, violent, sudden, dark, spring-like, falling, straight, slanting, sensual, subdued, limited, poisonous, calming pale light. Light.’ There are so many ways you can use light to tell a story. I think anyone who wants to understand light should read this book.”
That is from the American Society of Cinematographers.
Sven Nykvist was really something – one of the great cinematographers, who helped the medium embrace the possibilities of colour, even though he and Bergman created so many images which seemed to define the beauty of black and white.
He died a few days ago, his verbal abilities scrambled for the last decade by aphasia. He was 83. Over a fifty year career, starting at the age of 23, he worked on more than 120 films. He was sometimes called “the Rembrandt of film”.
The Times has a lovely description of his childhood interest in film:
“He was born Sven Vilhelm Nykvist in Alvesta in southern Sweden in 1922, though his parents spent much of their time in the Congo and the young Nykvist was left behind with an aunt. “One of my very early memories is of looking at images from Africa captured on a wind-up film camera,” he said. “They showed African men building a church with my father, and they captivated me.”
His aunt gave him his first camera, and his initial interest was in photography rather than film. He was also a keen athlete as a teenager and saved his earnings from a paper round to buy an 8mm film camera specifically to film and analyse high-jump techniques. That experience aroused his interest in film, even though his parents regarded cinema as sinful.”
The obituary in The Guardian is very good, and it comes with a slide show.
“It has taken me 30 years to come to simplicity. Earlier, I made a lot of what I thought were beautiful shots with much backlighting and many effects, absolutely none of which were motivated by anything in the film at all. As soon as we had a painting on the wall, we thought it should have a glow around it. It was terrible and I can hardly stand to see my own films on television anymore. I look for two minutes and then I thank God that there is a word called simplicity.”
The Nykvist section in the Bergman website contains lovely stills, and some clips. There is a sweet personal tribute here.
More stills here.
Skammen
Silence
Persona
Cries and Whispers
Cries and Whispers
Fanny and Alexander
Tarkovsky and Nykvist working on ‘The Sacrifice’