One of the world's most admired cinematographers, Sven Nykvist has worked with many notable directors—Roman Polanski, Alan J. Pakula, Bob Rafelson, Paul Mazursky, and Louis Malle, to name a few. But he first gained prominence shooting for Ingmar Bergman, and, for many, remains Bergman's cameraman.

Born in Sweden, Nykvist was the child of missionaries and had a rather sheltered childhood. But his enthusiasm for films led him to photography school and a career in Sweden's film industry. In addition to shooting dozens of films all over the world, he has directed two features and a number of documentaries. His spare, softly lit style has won him many awards, including an Oscar in 1972 for Bergman's Cries and Whispers. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association named his work in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander the Best Cinematography of 1983.

In the Dialogue he recounts his inauspicious first day as a cinematographer, reveals some surprising details about his thirty-one-year sojourn with Bergman, and explains just what it is about the Swedish light that makes it unique.

Question: You've worked in Europe, America, all over the world. What are the major differences that you've noticed between the various film industries?

Sven Nykvist: Filmmaking is exactly the same all over the world. The only difficulty here in America is that you have such a large crew. I'm used to being with about eighteen people, so the first week I feel very, very nervous on an American production. Otherwise, it's the same—a gaffer asks me the same things and talks the same way and has the same movements in Paris or Los Angeles or Sweden or Italy. For that reason I feel at home almost everywhere, as though I'm in a family. I have to try to change my language a little, that's all. There is a difference in the light in different places, though. In Sweden we don't have the difficulties you have here in exteriors with the sun and seeing it the whole time. We have very long dusks and very long dawns. I'm not used to the sunlight. I can't handle it.

Question: What is your method of working in Sweden?

Nykvist: At home, especially with Ingmar Bergman, it's like this: The whole crew meets two months before shooting to read the whole script. Then we start to make tests. We build sets, and when everyone—the costume designer, the production designer, the makeup artist—is there, we make tests for the whole picture, so we will never be surprised when we start shooting. We are already halfway through the picture when we start to shoot it. And that is psychologically very important for all the people because everyone, including the grips and electricians, feels that he is as important as all the others. We have a group now that has been working together for twenty years; we really don't have to speak to each other, because we always know what the other will answer.

Question: How many pages of script can you shoot a day?

Nykvist: Usually three. When we made Scenes from a Marriage, we had just one million Kronor, two hundred thousand dollars, to make that picture and we had to shoot twenty minutes of finished film every day. It was shot in 16mm. So in the morning we did a shot of ten minutes, which is the length of a magazine of film, and at twelve o'clock we would set up for another ten minutes. In Sweden I operate the camera myself. It's difficult to remember for ten minutes the different zooms, movements, lines, and so on. It was a very hard picture; it was six hours long and we made it in forty days. You can see it in the lighting, which is very flat.

Question: Simple light and unusual work.

Nykvist: Bergman promised me it would never be blown up to 35mm. He absolutely promised me that, and we said that this is for television so, remember, we shall always be very close with the camera. It got such a big response that here in America they wanted to buy it for a feature. I was ashamed of the quality and felt it shouldn't be blown up, but I couldn't say no.

Question: Does operating the camera yourself detract from your being able to watch scenes as a director of photography?

Nykvist: No, not really, because when you are operating, you forget all about the other people around you. You just see this little scene and you live in that and you feel it. For me, operating is a sport and it helps me also sometimes to do better lighting.

Question: Do you choose lenses yourself or rely on the director to determine the emotional weight of the lens needed?

Nykvist: It depends. There was a time when everyone hated zoom lenses. When we started Cries and Whispers, Ingmar and I promised each other never to use the zoom lens. I suggested we bring one just to help us find out which fixed-focal-length lens we should have in each situation. But, of course, I found this was a wonderful toy. My left hand would come up and I would start to change the focal length on the zoom, and after a while I found I was neglecting to tell Ingmar I was using the zoom lens. I didn't know how to do it really, but I found out that if I zoomed during camera movements and in the same rhythm as the camera movements, then it really didn't show up very obviously. And then Ingmar said, "It's strange—I can't remember that we were tracking at all." I didn't tell him about using the zoom, but it started to work so well that he finally noticed my hands constantly working the lens. And he said, "Now I know how it comes. You are using a zoom that we have not discussed." I said, "It seems to work because you are always asking if we were tracking or not." Sometimes you have to use the tricks you can.

Question: Does the whole crew watch dailies when you work with Bergman?

Nykvist: The next morning I watch what we have shot with a production secretary and a timer from the lab. Ingmar doesn't want to see it, because he usually gets very upset and can't work the whole day. So he lets me see it, and then I tell him in a nice way what things we have done wrong. Ingmar sees the dailies once a week on a Saturday, quite alone. Whatever he sees has already been timed so that the colours match in shots.

Question: Did you learn your craft in a film school?

Nykvist: We didn't have any film schools; I had to go through a photographic school—a still-photographer school—and I had to go the long way, starting as a focus puller. I was a little lucky because I was working on a picture when the cameraman got sick. I was twenty-two years old; the others were over thirty. Because I was younger, I was much quicker to put up my hand when the steward chief said that one of us eight would have to take over. I started the next day. The director had been a cameraman before, so he knew exactly how much light we should use, and so on. And he thought that I had much too much light. So I put in diffuser after diffuser. Then we met—the whole crew—in the lab the next morning to see what we'd shot. And we just heard it—we never saw anything; it was pitch-dark. In shooting we had sometimes panned over a window and we could see the sunlight in that shot. I said, "OK, perhaps I can photograph windows. This will be the first and the last day for me as a cinematographer."

Question: What is the most important thing you have learned over the years?

Nykvist: It has taken me thirty years to come to simplicity. Earlier I made a lot of what I thought were beautiful shots with much backlighting, many effects, absolutely none of which was motivated by anything in the film at all—as soon as we had a painting on the wall we thought it should have a glow around it. It was terrible and I can hardly stand to see my own films on television any more. I look for two minutes and then I thank God that there is a word called "simplicity." I prefer to shoot on location because in the studio you have too many possibilities, with too many lights to destroy your whole picture.

Question: Was Fanny and Alexander shot on location?

Nykvist: That was shot in the studio except for some exterior shots in Uppsala in the winter. At the beginning of the picture, where the man goes to put out the gaslight, we stood and waited for two or three hours just to get the right mood for that moment. It's interesting you should mention Fanny and Alexander. You know, it was shown on Swedish television; nowadays, the producer usually has to go to television first to get money. I have a lot of fights with other cinematographers in Sweden because I think we must change our kind of lighting so it can fit both television and cinema. In Fanny and Alexander I had to make a softer light and also a brighter light than I would have done if the film had been just for the cinema. It's a compromise, but I think we all have to go through this. I meet a lot of cinematographers in Europe who don't agree with me. They say, "Why should we try to light for television when the important thing is cinema?" But I think we all have to work together.

Question: I heard that when you were shooting Swann in Love in Paris, you used Lightflex. What do you think of it?

Nykvist: Lightflex is a special light at the head of the camera with a mirror. I think it's a wonderful invention, but when I first looked at it I thought I would never learn how to use it. I had always been very suspicious of it; I think cinematographers have too many possibilities available now. On Star 80 I made some tests with Lightflex, but Bob Fosse was afraid of using it because he's afraid of all new things coming up. But Swann in Love, from a Marcel Proust story, had very, very wide shots. We were shooting in the biggest park, the Tuileries, and the Louvre and the other buildings were at least a hundred meters away—we had to stop half the traffic in Paris. That's very far away and I didn't know how I would get the light. I started to use Lightflex and I could not believe it. To my eyes it was pitch-dark in the background, but by using Lightflex I could see structure in the buildings. I used a blue filter and it picked up the sky, which was absolutely dark. Even if the buildings were a little blue—I said, when they asked me, "That's the moonlight. Don't you remember that we had moonlight?"

Question: Working on a film that is set in 1885, did you have any thought of the impressionists? Did you use them as a model?

Nykvist: Oh, yes. The director of the film, Volker Schlöndorff, and I shared a house with Jeremy Irons to be able to sit every night and discuss all these things—I think it is so important to have this relationship. We studied all different styles and the old paintings themselves.

Question: How do you get that soft quality in your films?

Nykvist: When Ingmar and I made Winter Light, which takes place in a church on a winter day in Sweden, we decided we should not see any shadow in it at all, because there would be no logical shadow in that setting. I said, "Oh, that will be an easy picture for me because the light doesn't change in three hours." He said, "That's what you think. Let's go to the churches in the north of Sweden." And there we sat for weeks, looking at the light during the three hours between eleven and two o'clock. We saw that it changed a lot and it helped him in writing the script because he always writes the moods. I asked the production designer to build a ceiling in the church so I wouldn't have any possibility of putting up lights or backlighting. I had to start with bounced light, and then after that I think I made every picture with bounced light. I really feel ill when I see a direct light coming into faces with its big nose shadow. And then we found that that kind of lighting was very good for colour. This soft light didn't get such bright colours, but a nice pastel tone. The only critical thing I have to say about my colour is that it is too nice, it's too pretty.

Question: Did you try to persuade Bergman to shoot Fanny and Alexander in black and white?

Nykvist: No. But I do like black and white very much. I think it is more artistic, and you can help the scriptwriter and the director to make it more dramatic and point out more what is important in the shot. I think colour can be distracting.

Question: Is black and white more difficult to light?

Nykvist: Now it is. Earlier I thought it was the opposite, but now I think it is much more difficult. And it's almost impossible to find a timer in the lab who has worked with black and white.

Question: Could you tell us about this project of yours, The Man on the Island?

Nykvist: I've been to Africa a lot because my parents were working there and I made a lot of documentaries there. I also directed two features there. I'm crazy about Africa, and I heard an incredible story there which I absolutely wanted to make. It's about a black man in the twenties who becomes stranded on an island in the Congo River while transporting money for the government. For twelve years I've been trying to make that picture, but there's always been an interesting director or an interesting script that wouldn't wait. But now the time has come. I can't wait any longer—and it is not because I want to be a director. I don't. I just want to tell this story and in a special way. I'm crazy about silent films—those of Sergei Eisenstein, Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller, Fritz Lang. They could really tell a story without words. It makes me crazy to see a script and just see lines the whole time, just dialogue. I always feel here's another time I have to photograph words. The special idea of The Man on the Island is that I shall try to make it not as a silent—of course I will use all the effects—but as a picture where it is not the words talking but the pictures talking.