Sven Nykvist Filmography

Born:: December 3, 1922 in Moheda, Sweden
Occupation:: Cinematographer
Biography:: Justly reputed by everyone (across the board) as the most gifted cinematographer of the 20th century, Sven Nykvist was one of a handful of practitioners of that craft who raised working with cinematic light (as a director of photography and a camera operator) to the level of an art form, on...Read More

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Light Keeps Me Company

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Woody Allen, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Richard Attenborough

Synopsis: This moving, finely-wrought portrayal of legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist was directed by his son Carl-Gustav Nykvist -- a noted filmmaker himself. Spanning from long forgotten kiddie flick in 1945 to Woody Allen's Celebrity (1997), Nykvist's career came to an abrupt end when he was Read More

2000
Celebrity

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Judy Davis, Famke Janssen, Joe Mantegna, Melanie Griffith

Synopsis: Black-and-white Sven Nykvist cinematography highlights this Woody Allen comedy about fame and obscurity among Manhattan celebs. Journalist Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh), makes a play for actress Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith), subject of his current story. Lee is separated from his wife Robin (Judy Davis Read More

11/20/98
Enskilda Samtal

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Pernilla August, Samuel Fröler, Max von Sydow, Thomas Hanzon

Synopsis: Originally made for television and directed by distinguished Swedish actress-turned-director Liv Ullman, this provocative drama is a sequel to director-turned-screenwriter Ingmar Bergman's autobiographical Bille August-directed drama Best Intentions (1992). Returning to their roles of Bergman's Read More

1997
Kristin Lavransdatter

Crew: Cinematographer

Synopsis: This medieval period drama from Norway is based on Scandinavian-author Sigrid Undset's classic novel. The story is set in Norway's Gudbrandsdal valley during the 14th century. The tale begins when Kristin is 7-years-old and living a peaceful, relatively happy life with her family. It has not Read More

1995
Something to Talk About

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Julia Roberts, Dennis Quaid, Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Kyra Sedgwick

Synopsis: The feminist outrage of Thelma & Louise (1991) screenwriter Callie Khouri blended superbly with director Lasse Hallstrom's predilection for stories about idiosyncratic families in this effective comedy-drama. Julia Roberts stars as Grace King Bichon, a prim small-town wife who is incensed when she Read More

1995
Just in Time

Crew: Cinematographer

1994
With Honors

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Joe Pesci, Brendan Fraser, Moira Kelly, Patrick Dempsey, Josh Hamilton

Synopsis: Harvard University graduate Alek Keshishian directed this tale about a homeless man who teaches some snotty Harvard students a thing or two about real life. Monty (Brendan Fraser) is a self-absorbed graduate student who is obsessed with finishing his thesis on government so that he can satisfy his Read More

1994
Mixed Nuts

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Robert Klein, Anthony LaPaglia, Juliette Lewis, Rita Wilson

Synopsis: A holiday comedy with dark overtones, Mixed Nuts presents a supposedly humorous look at the behind-the-scenes events at a crisis hotline on Christmas Eve. Philip (Steve Martin) runs Lifesavers, a Venice, California organization dedicated to helping the depressed and troubled. Unfortunately, Philip Read More

1994
Only You

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey, Jr., Bonnie Hunt, Joaquim de Almeida, Fisher Stevens

Synopsis: A woman throws caution to the wind in the pursuit of the man of her dreams -- whom she's never met -- in this romantic comedy. Eleven-year-old Faith (Tammy Minoff) and her cousin Kate (Jessica Hertel) are playing with a Ouiji Board when Faith asks who she will marry -- the magic oracle answers Read More

1994
Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography

Actors: Néstor Almendros, John A. Alonzo, Michael Ballhaus, Stephen H. Burum, Sven Nykvist, Vittorio Storaro, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis

Synopsis: The film equivalent of a stroll through the Louvre, the documentary Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography collects interviews with many of modern-day Hollywood's finest directors of photography and is illustrated by examples of their best work as well as scenes from the pictures which most Read More

1993
Sleepless in Seattle

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Dana Ivey, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rosie O'Donnell, Victor Garber, Rob Reiner

Synopsis: Sleepless in Seattle, the sophomore directorial effort from Nora Ephron, is a light romantic comedy inspired by the 1957 film An Affair to Remember. Tom Hanks stars as widower and single father Sam. When Sam's son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), calls into a talk radio program looking for a new mother Read More

1993
What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Darlene Cates

Synopsis: Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom's follow-up to the underrated Once Around earned far more attention than its predecessor thanks to the judicious casting of perennial thinking woman's heartthrob Johnny Depp and a certain up-and-coming thespian by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio. A prisoner of his Read More

1993
Chaplin

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Robert Downey, Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin, Kevin Dunn, Anthony Hopkins

Synopsis: Partly based on Charlie Chaplin's My Autobiography, this humorous and dramatic biopic features an all-star cast including Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, and Chaplin's real-life daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, who portrays his mentally ill Read More

12/25/92
The Ox

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Stellan Skarsgård, Ewa Fröling, Max von Sydow, Lennart Hjulström, Liv Ullmann

Synopsis: Based on a true story, the bleak period piece Oxen was co-written and directed by Ingmar Bergman's longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist. In the small village of Småland in the late 1860s, Helge Roos (Stellan Skarsgård) works as a farmer on an estate belonging to Svenning Gustafsson (Lennart Hjulström Read More

8/21/92
Buster's Bedroom

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Donald Sutherland, Geraldine Chaplin, Valentina Cortese, Amanda Ooms

Synopsis: At one time, even the great Buster Keaton was a regular visitor of the mental health, alcoholic rehabilitation-center system. Since main-character Micha is obsessed with Keaton and everything that has to do with him, it is appropriate that after trying to pull a stunt on the public highways in Read More

1990
Crimes and Misdemeanors

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Martin Landau, Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston

Synopsis: Woody Allen spent most of the 1980s and '90s veering between comedy and drama, and he rarely combined the two with greater success than in Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he weaved together two stories, one deadly serious, one often funny, both ending in sadness. Martin Landau plays Dr. Judah Read More

10/13/89
New York Stories

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nick Nolte, Rosanna Arquette, Patrick O'Neal, Heather McComb, Talia Shire, Jesse Borrego, Mia Farrow, Woody Allen, Mae Questel, Julie Kavner, Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Giannini

Synopsis: The omnibus film New York Stories is the product of three powerhouse filmmakers. The film is divided into three stories, each exploring a different aspect of life in the Big Apple. Life Lessons, directed by Martin Scorcese, is a Dostoevsky-like tale of the rarefied Art World, with Nick Nolte as a Read More

3/1/89
Katinka

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ole Ernst, Kurt Ravn, Tine Miehe-Renard, Erik Paaske

Synopsis: Bai (Le Ernst) is the stationmaster in a small whistle-stop town who must contend with the suffering of his dying wife Katrinka (Tammi Ost) in this depressing romantic drama. She knows her husband loves her but she has fantasies about Huus (Kurt Ravn), the shy estate manager who has suffered his Read More

1989
Another Woman

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Blythe Danner, Gene Hackman

Synopsis: Grad-school administrative head Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is in the midst of writing a book. The walls are thin in the apartment she's taken for work purposes, and soon Marion begins listening to the sessions conducted by her neighbor, an analyst. One of the patients is Hope (Mia Farrow), whose Read More

10/14/88
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson

Synopsis: In Philip Kaufman's surprisingly successful film adaptation of Czech author Milan Kundera's demanding 1984 bestseller, Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Tomas, an overly amorous Prague surgeon, while Juliette Binoche plays Tereza, the waiflike beauty whom he marries. Even though he's supposedly committed Read More

2/5/88
The Sacrifice

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Allan Edwall, Gudrún Gísladóttir, Valérie Mairesse

Synopsis: The Sacrifice, director Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, begins in Bergmanesque fashion on a small, remote island, where friends and family gather for drama critic Alexander's (Erland Josephson) birthday celebration. The revelry is interrupted by a radio announcement: World War III has begun, and Read More

11/7/86
Dream Lover

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Kristy McNichol, Ben Masters, Paul Shenar, Justin Deas, John McMartin

Synopsis: Director Alan J. Pakula does the best anyone can with this complicated tale of what happens when the dream state and the waking state are confused and intermingled. While at home alone one day, Kathy Gardner (Kristy McNichol) defends herself against an intruder by stabbing him in the back. Now Read More

2/21/86
Nobody's Child

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ray Baker, Marlo Thomas

Synopsis: Marlo Thomas fully justifies her star status in the made-for-television Nobody's Child. Ms. Thomas portrays the real-life Marie Balter, a Massachusetts woman consigned to a mental hospital after a suicide attempt at age 16. For the next 20 years, Marie is and out of the institution, mostly under Read More

1986
Agnes of God

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly, Anne Pitoniak, Winston Rekert

Synopsis: Agnes of God is an "opened up" adaptation of the minimalist stage play by John Pielmeier. Meg Tilly plays a young nun who secretly gives birth to a baby; the child's body is later found strangled to death. Court-appointed psychiatrist Jane Fonda is sent to the convent to investigate, a task made Read More

1985
Swann in Love

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Ornella Muti, Alain Delon, Fanny Ardant, Marie-Christine Barrault

Synopsis: This ambitious attempt to film a portion of Marcel Proust's epic novel Remembrance of Things Past stars Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann, a Jewish intellectual who has managed to overcome growing anti-Semitism in 19th century France and travels in an elite social circle. But Swann has become obsessed Read More

1984
After the Rehearsal

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lena Olin, Ingrid Thulin, Erland Josephson

Synopsis: Ingmar Bergman's After the Rehearsal stars Erland Josephson as a theater director named Henrik Volger. He is in the midst of mounting a production of a Strindberg play when he is visited by Anna Egerman (Lena Olin), an actress whom he has cast in the play. Volger was involved with Anna's mother Read More

1984
Star 80

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Mariel Hemingway, Eric Roberts, Cliff Robertson, Carroll Baker, Roger Rees

Synopsis: Director Bob Fosse's fact-based tale of Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten's short life and gruesome death focuses less on Stratten (played by Mariel Hemingway) than on her husband/manager, sleazoid pornographer and all-around failure Paul Snider (Eric Roberts, ideally cast). He sees the young Read More

1983
Fanny & Alexander

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Gunn Wållgren, Börje Ahlstedt, Allan Edwall

Synopsis: Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Read More

1982
Cannery Row

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, Audra Lindley, Frank McRae, M. Emmet Walsh

Synopsis: This highly anecdotal film centers upon Doc (Nick Nolte), a self-employed marine biologist who lives by the ocean and interacts with the neighborhood denizens, trying to conceal a troubled past. Across from Doc's digs stands the local bordello, the Bear Flag Restaurant. Across the entrance ambles Read More

1982
Fanny & Alexander

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Gunn Wållgren, Börje Ahlstedt, Allan Edwall

1982
The Postman Always Rings Twice

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange, John Colicos, Michael Lerner, John Ryan

Synopsis: Bob Rafelson's remake of 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice, with a screenplay by the award-winning playwright David Mamet, stars Jack Nicholson as Frank Chambers, a depression-era drifter who ends up at a diner run by Nick Papadakis (John Colicos), who offers Frank a job. Frank takes him up on Read More

1981
Aus Dem Leben Der Marionetten

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Christine Buchegger, Martin Benrath, Rita Russek

Synopsis: Produced and directed for German television, Ingmar Bergman's From the Life of the Marionettes starts out in color and switches almost immediately to black-and-white. This cinematic self-indulgence is ideally suited to the subject matter: the horrible consequences of a rapidly disintegrating Read More

1980
Willie and Phil

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Michael Ontkean, Margot Kidder, Ray Sharkey, Jan Miner, Jerry Hall, Natalie Wood

Synopsis: Director Paul Mazursky's follow-up to his 1978 hit An Unmarried Woman found this filmmaker creating a feature-length homage to the François Truffaut classic Jules and Jim. Willie and Phil begins with Jewish intellectual schoolteacher Willie (Michael Ontkean) meeting gregarious Italian-American Read More

1980
Hurricane

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Jason Robards, Jr., Mia Farrow, Max von Sydow, Trevor Howard, Dayton Ka'ne

Synopsis: This film showed up on TV as Forbidden Paradise, but you can't fool us. It's really The Hurricane, producer Dino De Laurentiis' ill-advised remake of the 1938 Sam Goldwyn production of the same name. The story of the casual cruelties imposed by the white ruling class on the natives of the isle of Read More

1979
Marmeladupproret

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, Marie Goranzon, Jan Malmsjö, Kristina Adolphson

Synopsis: Eller (Erland Josephson) is a successful, middle-aged married man who becomes a celebrity when he woos the femme reporter Anna (Bibi Andersson) during his mid-life crisis. He goes on the lecture circuit where he encourages avid listeners to abandon the shackles of staid mediocrity and live life to Read More

1979
Starting Over

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh, Candice Bergen, Charles Durning, Frances Sternhagen

Synopsis: Scripted by James L. Brooks from Dan Wakefield's novel, Alan J. Pakula's romantic comedy follows the tribulations of a freshly divorced man as he looks for love with a wary single woman. Phil Potter (Burt Reynolds sans mustache) can't quite believe it when his aspiring songbird wife Jessica (Candice Bergen Read More

1979
Pretty Baby

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Keith Carradine, Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Frances Faye, Antonio Fargas

Synopsis: After making a series of acclaimed and controversial films in his native France, director Louis Malle made his American debut with this disturbing but visually beautiful story about Hattie (Susan Sarandon), a prostitute working in New Orleans' Storyville district at the turn of the century. When Read More

1978
Autumn Sonata

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Lena Nyman, Halvar Björk, Georg Lökkeberg, Erland Josephson

Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship Read More

1978
King of the Gypsies

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Shelley Winters, Susan Sarandon, Eric Roberts

Synopsis: Not surprisingly, this fascinating dissection of Gypsy life in America was vilified by several ethnic special-interest groups, who'd previously delivered their mimeoed missives to novelist Peter Maas, on whose book the film was based. Sterling Hayden is the "king" of a New York-based gypsy tribe Read More

1978
En och en

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin

Synopsis: After years of ignoring the shy cousin whom she and her peers taunted mercilessly as a child, a middle-aged woman (Ingrid Thulin) wrenches the poor man (Erland Josephson) out of his self-chosen solitude to accompany her on a trip. Despite developments which deepen their knowledge of one another Read More

1978
The Serpent's Egg

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Liv Ullmann, David Carradine, Gert Fröbe, Heinz Bennent, James Whitmore

Synopsis: The Serpent's Egg, or Das Schlangenei is director Ingmar Bergman's second English language production (The Touch was his first). It is, however, his first completely non-Swedish production, made after his voluntary self-exile from Sweden over taxation issues. Set in Berlin in the early 1920s, it Read More

1977
A Look at Liv

Actors: Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullmann

Synopsis: This 1977 documentary feature closely examines the person, views and life of Norwegian actress Liv Ullman, perhaps best known for her many appearances in the famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's films. Clips of her films are included, as well as numerous interviews granted by her especially for Read More

1977
The Tenant

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, Bernard Fresson, Shelley Winters

Synopsis: Director Roman Polanski casts himself in the lead of the psychological thriller The Tenant. Trelkovsky (Polanski) rents an apartment in a spooky old residential building, where his neighbors -- mostly old recluses -- eye him with suspicious contempt. Upon discovering that the apartment's previous Read More

1976
Ansikte mot Ansikte

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Kari Sylwan

Synopsis: Liv Ullmann plays Dr. Jenny Isakson, a psychiatrist who is taking a vacation while her husband Dr. Erik Isakson (Sven Lindberg) is elsewhere. Haunted by visions of an old woman, Jenny suffers from profound, inexplicable depression. Desperately in search of a escape from her doldrums, she has an Read More

1976
The Magic Flute

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Josef Kostlinger, Irma Urrila, Ulrik Gold, Erik Saeden, Birgit Nordin, Håkan Hagegård

Synopsis: A longtime pet project of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute was finally brought to the screen in 1973. While the opera itself is offered in a highly stylized and theatrical fashion, the fluidity of the camerawork turns the affair into a purely Read More

1975
Black Moon

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Alexandra Stewart, Joe Dallesandro

Synopsis: In Louis Malle's apocalyptic fantasy Black Moon, Lily (Cathryn Harrison, granddaughter of Rex) drives down a lonesome road, and soon finds herself in a alternate world full of non sequiturs and bizarre characters. At times, this looks like a David Lynch film, what with an old woman conversing with Read More

1975
Monismanien 1995

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Erland Josephson, Harriet Andersson, Holger Loewenadler

Synopsis: Despite having sponsored films by Ingmar Bergman, and many others, director Kenne Fant was subjected to an incredible amount of ad hominem abuse when he released this film. Fant, an actor and later a director, managed to offend many sensitive types during his chairmanship of the State Film Read More

1974
The Dove

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Setoki Ceinaturoga, Jose Augusto DeLima, Gordon Glenwright, Garth Meade, Apenisa Naigulevu, Cecily Polson, Joseph Bottoms, Deborah Raffin, John McLiam, Dabney Coleman, John Anderson

Synopsis: Gregory Peck produced this coming-of-age adventure, richly photographed by Sven Nykvist. Based on a true story, the film documents the five-year journey of Robin Lee Graham (Joseph Bottoms), a 16-year-old boy who sets out in a 23-foot sloop, determined to be the youngest person to sail around the Read More

1974
Ransom

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Sean Connery, Ian McShane, Norman Bristow, John Cording, Isabel Dean

Synopsis: Sean Connery stars in Caspar Wrede's hostage melodrama, featuring lustrous cinematography by Sven Nykvist. A group of terrorists hijack an airplane and hold the passengers at bay until political prisoners are released. Sent in to stop them is Scandinavian government agent Nils Tahlvik (Sean Connery Read More

1974
Scenes from a Marriage

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Jan Malmsjö, Anita Wall

Synopsis: Originally created as a six-part series for television, this film -- widely regarded as one of Ingmar Bergman's most powerful later works -- offers a close-up examination of a relationship as it slowly falls apart, and investigates the toll it takes on both parties. Johan and Marianne (Erland Josephson Read More

1974
Scenes From a Marriage

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Jan Malmsjö, Anita Wall

1973
Strohfeuer

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Margarethe von Trotta

Synopsis: Margarethe Von Trotta, who later became a well-known film director herself, stars in this film which is directed by her husband Volker Schlondorff. It tells the story of a woman whose divorce has just been finalized. At first, she is joyful and feels very free, but gradually the realities of Read More

1972
Cries and Whispers

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson

Synopsis: Cries and Whispers stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Thulin as the sisters of dying cancer patient Harriet Andersson. Both sisters have already had brushes with death: Ullman has had an affair which prompted her husband's suicide, while Thulin has long wanted to do away with herself, at one point Read More

1972
Siddhartha

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Kunai Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Ramesh Sharma, Pincho Kapoor, Zul Vellani

Synopsis: Two-time director Conrad Rooks (known for his autobiographical drug-addiction opus of 1966, Chappaqua), helms this big-screen adaptation of Hermann Hesse's novel, about an Indian youth who leaves his family in search of life's meaning. The film sports location photography by Bergman associate Sven Nykvist Read More

1972
The Last Run

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: George C. Scott, Tony Musante, Trish VanDevere, Colleen Dewhurst

Synopsis: George C. Scott stars in The Last Run as an aging mob driver hoping to make one last big haul and retire. Harry Garmes (Scott) is persuaded by his old cronies to drive escaped criminal Paul Ricard (Tony Musante) and his girlfriend, Claudio Schemer (Trish VanDevere), across Spain to safety. Garmes Read More

1971