(2000) Director Carl-Gustaf Nykvist's affectionate and approbatory documentary of his father's life behind a camera. Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the master of soft, natural light, filmed nearly 100 motion pictures for Ingmar Bergman (with whom the famous director said he shared something like a parallel mind, the same feeling for light and camera placement), Woody Allen, Louis Malle, Roman Polanski, Andrei Tarkovsky (who was more interested in images than in light or actors), and others, including Fanny and Alexander, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Sleepless in Seattle, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

The documentary is composed of film clips from his professional work, home movies, and behind-the-scenes footage; readings from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (with whom he identified early in life); and an interweaving of interviews with directors, other cinematographers such as Vilmos Zsigmond, producers, friends outside of the picture industry, actresses - such as Susan Sarandon, Gena Rowlands, Melanie Griffith, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson - who speak of his kindness and open warm-heartedness, his modest reticence, his tactfulness and charming demeanor, his calm good-humored mood on the set.

He was a Centaur of camera and man with an intuitive feeling for the importance of faces, especially the eyes of an actor. Born in 1922 to missionary parents who would leave their three children for four years at a time to attend to children in African, Sven also led a life of travel to film locations, leaving behind his wife Ulla and their two sons for months at a time. After sixteen years, his wife divorced him; his younger son Johan committed suicide. His relationship with Mia Farrow helped him deal with his grief. In 1998 he was diagnosed with progressive aphasia, an untreatable language dementia, which ended his career.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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