Sven N | d243

Sven Nykvist

Born: 3rd of December 1922

Died: 20th September 2006 (Age: 83)

Occupation: Cinematographer

Nationality: Swedish

Sven Nykvist was a Swedish cinematographer. He worked on over 120 films. Sven Nykvist’s parents were Lutheran missionaries, who spent the majority of their lives living in Belgian Congo. Sven because of this was brought up by family relatives in Sweden and rarely saw his parents. His father was an amateur wildlife photographer, and Sven was inspired by him, and this sparked Sven's interest in arts that are visual.

As a child, Sven was a very talented athlete and to improve his techniques in the high jump, he shot his first film, with a camera looking at the high jump whilst he jumped over it. He could then look back and see what he was doing right and wrong. He then studied for a year at the Municipal School for Photographers. He entered the Swedish film industry at the age of 19 and over a 3 year period he made many short films. Sven then went to visit his parents and filmed some of the wildlife in Africa, the footage from this trip was later published as part of a documentary titled,

Footsteps of the Witch Doctor.

When he returned to Sweden, he began work on a new project, working with the director Ingmar Bergman in 1993, on the film Sawdust and Tinsel. Sven was one of three cinematographers to work on that particular movie.

He eventually became Bergman’s full-time cinematographer and pushed the director’s thoughts in a new direction, to a new normal, of innovative close-up shots, showing much more of the subject’s face, It was hard to move away from his usual style of a theatrical look. A film made using his new technique is called Persona.

Sven then went on to work in the United States of America and in other locations around the world on movies such as The Last Run and Fanny and Alexandra.

Awards

Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two of his movies: Cries and Whispers, And Fanny and Alexandra. Both were Bergman films.

Movies he filmed/ helped film

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Celebrity (1998)

Star 80 (1983)

The Dove (1974)

The Last Run (1971)

And many more

Here is some more detail on the way he films, as I watched the film he made called: Celebrity (1998)

The Film starts off with an aeroplane, sketching the word help in the sky, and some ground panning up shots, where the high dynamic range is perfect. Then the film transitions to my personal favourite shot, there the camera crew follow a camera train down the tracks, while on tracks, the shot looks smooth and well thought out and ends with a man,

with the sun behind him.

After watching the rest of this film I have come to the conclusion that Nykvist's filming is absolutely outstanding and here is why each time there was a shot, where the blue sky was in the picture, there was always the buildings in front of it exposed correctly leading to a shot where you can see everything. Nothing was underexposed, as well as this I had noticed that Nykvist has used very little bokeh in this film creating a feeling in me that this is a serious film when it was truly full of comedy! The camera angles used high and low suited every scene and I can tell why the film was praised for its cinematography. Another pet hate of mine, which I saw in this film was having things centre frame and everything was!

and that is all I've really got to say about this film, the colours were great, the framing of subjects was also great.

The camera angles were on point and it was buttery smooth, a good film by Nykvist that is what I have to say.