Sven Nykvist

As a lover of film I am always in awe of when mood is set not by the actors or the music but by the lighting or the way the camera lens sees things. The choices made when recording photographic images for the cinema can make or break a film.

Sven Nykvist, 83, was one who had that eye. He died this week. I loved many of the films that he worked on as an acclaimed cinematographer.  Just think back a moment when you may have seen films especially like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Pretty Baby, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Chaplin, or even Sleepless in Seattle.
You have to admit they were beautiful to look at. Even if you didn’t care about the movie the art was there. Sven Nykvist did his job and did it well.

Nykvist worked with many great directors including Woody Allen, Norman Jewison and Bob Fosse but he will be most known for his work with Ingmar Bergman, for whom he shot some 20 films.

  In the course of this association, which began in 1953 with Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel, Nykvist's work evolved from an emphasis on carefully composed, self-consciously beautiful images to a bleaker, grainier, more realistic texture best seen in a film such as The Shame (1968). Bergman gave him a hard time on the set of Sawdust, but in the end was so pleased with his work that he told him: "I think we should work a whole life together."

 His most admired work, which brought him two Oscars, was in Bergman's Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1983).

  Cries and Whispers, which depicts the world as seen by a woman suffering from terminal cancer, was composed in multiple shades of red, supposedly to evoke a womb-like impression. Though few cinemagoers, perhaps, would have identified this, all acknowledged the beauty of the effect.

My favorite , Fanny and Alexander, was Bergman's last work for the cinema, and was a nostalgic, semi-autobiographical piece for which the cameraman devised warm lighting and a rich palette ideally suited to the material.

 When Bergman gave up film-making, Nykvist formed a new and productive association with Woody Allen, for whom he shot Another Woman (1988), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and The Oedipus Wrecks episode of New York Stories (also 1989).

   He photographed a variety of other Hollywood films, including Agnes of God (1985); Richard Attenborough's biopic of Chaplin (1992); and the Nora Ephron hit Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

The next time you turn your TV set on and see the rerun of the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film ( TBS or TNT) , flip it on and look at the scenes that were planned for you by one of the true artist of cinema : Sven Nykvist