There is no director–cinematographer relationship in the history of cinema that comes close to that between Ingmar Bergman and Sven Nykvist. And no cinematographer created such mesmerizing ties between story and lighting as Nykvist.
He was born in Sweden in 1922 and was already intrigued by photography as a teenager. At the age of 16, he bought a Keystone 8mm camera which he used to film athletes in slow motion doing the high jump. By 19, he was in Stockholm working as an assistant cameraman at Sandrews Studios, and from 1943 to 1945 he moved to Rome to work at Cinecitta. Returning to Sweden in 1945, he got his first cinematographer credit on The Children From Frostmo Mountain at the age of 23.
He worked on several Swedish films over the next decade, but his life was to change in 1953 when he was one of three cinematographers on Sawdust and Tinsel directed by young hotshot filmmaker Bergman. From then on, Nykvist became Bergman’s sole DP and experimented with lighting to accentuate and enhance the mood in films such as The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and Winter Light (1963).
The black-and-white images in these films are among the most haunting in the era. In Persona in 1966, Nykvist went for intense closeups on the actresses Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, daringly fusing the two characters into one. Nykvist said that because Bergman used the same company of actors on most of his films, he was able to study their faces and light every detail.
Ironically, for all the breakthroughs they made together in black and white, Bergman and Nykvist were just as groundbreaking in color, creating a vivid color palette of reds for Cries and Whispers, which won Nykvist an Oscar. Mostly shooting on the island of Faro where Bergman lived and worked, Nykvist shot all the films, as well as classic TV series such as Scenes from a Marriage, Face to Face, and Fanny and Alexander, all of which were reversioned as features. He won a second Oscar for Fanny and Alexander.
Nykvist’s fame from the Bergman films made him one of the most sought-after cinematographers in the world and he subsequently worked with some of the other great directors. On Roman Polanski’s The Tenant in 1976, he was encouraged to light the visual detail of each scene often at the expense of the actors—the opposite of Bergman’s method. Other collaborators included Louis Malle (Pretty Baby, 1978), Bob Fosse (Star 80, 1983), Paul Mazursky (Willie and Phil, 1980), Jan Troell (Hurricane, 1979), Bob Rafelson (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981), Volker Schlöndorff (Swann in Love, 1984), Norman Jewison (Agnes of God, 1985), and Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1988).
He was also seen as conduit to the Bergman magic, and worked with filmmakers who admired Bergman such as Andrei Tarkovsky on his final film, The Sacrifice (1986), which was shot on the island of Gotland next to Bergman’s home island of Faro and starred Bergman’s favorite actor, Erland Josephson.
Nykvist also established a rapport with Bergman acolyte Woody Allen, shooting four films including one of Allen’s best, Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989. He also shot two films directed by Liv Ullmann—Kristin Lavransdatter in 1995 and Private Confessions in 1996.
He also directed several films himself, most recently The Ox (1991), which featured many of the Bergman regulars including Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson.
He died in 2006 at the age of 83, just under a year before Bergman himself.
01 Sven Nykvist on the set of Star 80
02 Face to Face
03 The Serpent’s Egg
04 Scenes from a Marriage
05 Autumn Sonata
