TRIBUTE
Ode to the master of light
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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Remembering cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who died last month.
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`Every time I start a picture, the first day is like I am starting all over again. I love it. You can always learn something new... '
PHOTO: REUTERS
Glorious collaboration: Sven Nykvist with Ingmar Bergman during the shooting of "Fanny and Alexander".
"A motion picture doesn't have to look absolutely realistic. It can be beautiful and realistic at the same time. I am not interested in beautiful photography. I am interested in telling stories about human beings, how they act and why they act that way."
Sven Nykvist
WITH the demise of celebrated cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the silver screen has lost one of its most distinguished storytellers. He will always be remembered for his long and close association with the legendary Swedish maestro, Ingmar Bergman, an association that was hailed as one of the most glorious collaborations in movie history.
Born on December 3, 1922, in Moheda, Kronobergs län, Sweden, to missionary parents (who built a hospital in the Belgian Congo), Sven Vilhem Nykvist studied at the Stockholm Municipal School for Photographers. When he was 19, he went to work at Sandrews Studios in Stockholm as an assistant cameraman, and spent a year at the Italian Cinecitta studios as a `focus-puller' before returning to Sweden. His first narrative film, "13 Chairs", was shot in Stockholm when he was 23. In early 1950s, he made several documentary films including "Under the Southern Cross" (produced in the Belgian Congo and, based on an experience his parents had with a witch doctor), and a film about German-born theologian, philosopher, and medical missionary, Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa.
Enduring partnership
Nykvist worked with Bergman for the first time in "Sawdust and Tinsel" in 1953 but he was just one of the three cinematographers of the film. Seven years later, they came together for "The Virgin Spring", which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. As the cliché goes, the rest is history.
Bergman never concealed his admiration for the skill and mastery of his cameraman and acknowledged the role he played in weaving some of the most insightful tales on celluloid. "Our feeling for light was same," he would say.
Sven Nykvist.
It was also well known that while presenting many stirring moments of Bergman's intimately autobiographical, richly allegorical and psychoanalytically oriented films, Nykvist delicately balanced the imagery, making subtle use of light and often employing simplest of visual devices.
Nykvist's tryst with Bergman included such well-known cinematic offerings as "Through a Glass Darkly" (1960), "Winter Light" (1963), "The Silence" (1963), "Persona" (1966), "Hour of the Wolf" (1968), "The Passion of Anna" (1969), "Cries and Whispers" (1973), "The Magic Flute" (1975), "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973), "Face to Face" (1976), "Autumn Sonata" (1978), "The Serpent's Egg" (1977) and "Fanny and Alexander" (1982). Nykvist won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for "Cries and Whispers" and "Fanny and Alexander".
In a career spanning more than half a century and nearly 120 films, Nykvist also worked with several other directors including Woody Allen ("Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Celebrity"), Louis Malle ("Pretty Baby"), Philip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being"), Roman Polanski ("The Tenant"), and Andrei Tarkovsky ("The Sacrifice"). He won Cannes Film Festival Prix de la Meilleure Contribution Artistique au Festival International du Film (1985) for "The Sacrifice", and was nominated at the Oscar for his cinematography in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988).
There was an Indian connection too: Nykvist shot Conrad Rook's "Siddhartha" (1972) in parts of Northern India. The film was based on Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse's novel of the same name and starred Shashi Kapoor and Simi Garewal.
Passion for light
Nykvist normally operated the camera himself and preferred to shoot on location. He believed that cinematography to be an unusual occupation. "It is both an art and a craft... Every time I start a picture, the first day is like I am starting all over again. I love it. You can always learn something new... It has taken me 30 years to come to simplicity... I thank God that there is a word called simplicity."
The recipient of the ASC's International Award in 1996 would unhesitatingly credit Bergman for making him realise the ultimate possibilities of cinematography: "I owe a great debt to Ingmar, for he gave me my passion for light. Without him I would have remained just another technical cameraman with no great awareness of the infinite possibilities of lighting... I learned so much about composition, staging and the infinite varieties of light from Ingmar ... He has a mind and an imagination that takes in not only the limits of poetic imagery, but — equally — the scientific aspects of filmmaking. He has done away with `nice' photography and has shown us how to find truth in camera movement and in lighting... I have Ingmar Bergman to thank for letting me experiment with a kind of cinematography which, by utilising true light where possible, seems to me to do greater justice to the medium."
The Bergman-Nykvist partnership lasted three decades. "We've developed a private language, so to speak," Bergman once revealed. "We hardly need to say a word... The light in the images is something I hardly think can ever be attributed to just one of us. Perhaps I can put it like this: the impulse comes from me, and the enormously careful, subtle and technically clever execution is all Sven Nykvist's work... . One part of knowing what to do is simply the ability to eliminate a mass of irrelevant technical complications to be able to peel away a mass of superficial apparatus... Nykvist is a technically clever cameraman, one of the cleverest in the world. All he needs to work is three lamps and a little greaseproof paper... "
Ironically, in his last years, the `master of light' was treated for aphasia (defects of expression or comprehension caused by brain disorders). When he breathed his last on September 20, 2006 at a Stockholm nursing home, he was 83.
E-mail: giridharkhasnis@gmail.com
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