"Jag tror inte livet har lärt mig natot, för jag gör alltid samma misstag igen" ("I do not think that I have learned much from life, because I should make the same mistakes again")—Gunnar Björnstrand made that very frank comment when interviewed recently. If he had his time over again he would be an actor again, and no doubt his new Swedish audiences would be just as grateful as the present ones for such a "mistake."

Gunnar Björnstrand was given plenty of warnings against the stage, and he had no easy road even to get to dramatic school. His father was an actor, a character actor of many roles at Sweden's National Theatre, and he had warned his son in these words: "To be just an actor is nothing, the stage is a worthwhile profession if one is a great actor." That well-meant advice was intended to keep Gunnar from the theatre, however Gunnar proved the soundness of the advice in a way unexpected by his father—he has become just about the best actor in Sweden.

Studied With Ingrid

In 1933 he began to study to be an actor at Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, the National Theatre of Sweden, in the same class as Ingrid Bergman. However, his path to theatrical training had been very different to hers, because he had had to earn his living. He had done this in a variety of jobs: railwayman, insurance agent, hairdresser's assistant, traveller for sewing machines, office clerk and confectioner. But when he was accepted by the theatre he was happy, because he felt at home. In fact the theatre was his home, and for that any sacrifice would have been worthwhile.

After his dramatic training, followed a stretch at the Swedish-language Vasa Theatre of Finland (Swedish is the cultural language of Finland) as many famous national Swedish actors had done before him. On his return to Sweden he went into operetta and revue, and toured before coming to the Swedish theatre proper. Films did not come until 1944, when he made his motion picture debut as a Gestapo officer—and here it must be said that such parts in Scandinavian films were far more carefully drawn studies than the crude characterisations of the wartime American films.

It was in 1952 that the name Gunnar Björnstrand became synonymous with the best in Swedish film acting. The film which did this was Kvinnors vantan (Woman's Waiting), in which he played a scene in a closed lift with that fine Swedish actress Eva Dahlbeck, his acting partner of some of the best Swedish films made since that date. That lift scene is likely to be mentioned in future books on film art—the director was Ingmar Bergman, of course. The next year the same trio made the sophisticated Swedish comedy En lektion i karlek (A Lesson in Love) followed, in 1954, with the exquisite Kvinnodröm (The Dream of Women) and then, in 1955, the internationally acclaimed, prize-winning Sommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night).

His Best Work

Gunnar Björnstrand has done his best film work with Ingmar Bergman: the interesting, somewhat remote portrayal of a theatre director in Gycklarnas afton (screened in England as Sawdust and Tinsel), the tough, worldly squire in Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal), and the flat, nonentity part—surely a test for a good actor—of the middle-aged son of the professor in Smulltronstället (Wild Strawberries), which has been awarded the "Golden Bear" at the Berlin Film Festival.

With other directors Gunnar Björnstrand is hardly less brilliant. Excellent in comedy, he is the Swedish counterpart of the slightly "dotty," middle-aged Englishman of the Ealing comedy films. He actually makes it seem desirable that on approaching middle-age, one should begin to develop such a personality.

Gunnar Björnstrand has only one complaint about his chosen profession. The smallish Swedish film industry cannot always offer him parts which use to the full his acting talent—he may get two such parts a year, but in order to give his family (he married a school friend in 1935, and has three daughters, aged 16, 10 and 5 years), a reasonable living, he may also have to take on another picture which does not really interest him, but in which he performs brilliantly, nevertheless. He would, therefore, welcome the chance of an occasional English or American film.

I said that after Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and now Anskitet (The Face), a drama set in the 1840's, in which I saw him before the cameras at Svensk Filmindustri's Rasunda Studios, I was able to assure him that he would have the choice of such offers before his fiftieth birthday, an event of considerable importance in Sweden. English-language motion picture producers have now less than two years to make my words good. I hope for the sake of themselves—and international film audiences—that they will not let me down!