If I still had aspirations to be a cinematographer, Mr. Nykvist would be my role model. Just look at the long list of spectacular movies with his name on them. What a talent.
“Light Keeps Me Company” (Carl-Gustav Nykvist)
Sven Nykvist, 1922-2006. Oscar-winning filmmaker Sven Nykvist, who was legendary director Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer of choice, died Wednesday after a long illness, his son said. He was 83. Nykvist died at a nursing home where he was being treated for aphasia, a form of dementia, said his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist.“
Mostly I knew his work with Bergman, even studying a few semesters of Swedish in the folly of my youth, but I've seen several of his other films as well.
[will add obits of interest as I find them]
Washington Post
A MAJOR talent. Many of those Bergman films owe their stark beauty to Nyquist.
Though, hard to separate the collaboration from the collaborators. If you've ever participated in a joint art project, you'll find the borders are blurred between who did what.
Of course the converse is true, and no doubt, Mr. Nykvist was one of the top cinematographer the medium of film has enjoyed.
True--hard to know exactly how much of the greatness of these films belongs to Ingmar, how much to Sven, how much to those excellent actors I love so much. Certainly a most fruitful conglomerate!
I do know that Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice felt precisely like a Bergman film, and didn't know until now that Nykvist had worked on that (the presence of Erland Josephson certainly helped add a Bergman feel as well).
I just added The Sacrifice to my queue. I really need to strike it rich, and spend a two year sabbatical catching up on my netflix list which is getting a bit unweildy (241 titles currently).
One of my New Years' Resolutions was to get the Netflix queue under 300 films. It's down around 250. Working goofy hours has allowed for a lot of reading/late-night movie time; I'm sure that will change when I start 9-5 in a couple weeks.