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Swedish bookstores were to also see the publication of the erotic poem En Karleksdikt, written by Lars Forssell in 1960. The novel The Costume Ball (Kostsymbalen), written by Swedish Modernist Sven Fagerberg, appeared the following year, his then in 1963 having published the novel The Fencers (Svardfaktarna). Meanwhile, Sveriges Radio during 1960 produced the television film Ovader, directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Mona Malm, Birgitta Gronwald, and Gunnel Brostrom. The assistant director to the film was Gertrude Bjorklund. Peter Cowie likens the film Blue Week (Sininen vikko, 1954) directed in Finnland by Matti Kassila, thematicly to Bergman's Summer with Monika and Summer Interlude, his even going so far as to compare its photography, filmed by Osmo Harkimo, to that of Gunnar Fischer. Seminal to Swedish cinema, A Crime (Ett Brott, 1940), directed by Anders Henrikson with Edvin Adolphson and Karin Eckelund is distinguished as having brought the themes of marital complications to the screen. Strindberg writes, "The author must be bound by no definite form, for form is conditioned by the plot and the subject matter." Why themes of marriage are fitting subjects for literature is not merely because they are concerned with truth, as they particularly seem to be in the short stories of Strindberg, but also because they involve the character, known to himself and as participating in the drama of being individual. Writing in Film Quarterly, while reviewing Ingmar Bergman Directs by Emil Tornqvist, Sidney Gottlieb looks at Bergman's use of theme in a way similar to Strindberg. Although appreciative of Tornqvist's book and its examination of the theatricality of Begrman's films, Gottlieb cautions that Bergman's use of symbolism and abstracts shots that are seemingly, if not altogether, unconected to the narrative of the particular film, is not necessarily theatrical in a way contrary to the realism inherent in cinema, although Bergman may depend upon Strindberg, and possibly Ibsen. The author Maaret Koskin has added Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (The Queen's Diadem; Amorina, 1839) to the influences upon Bergman. A member of a mailing list had sent an e-mail this September announcing the publication of a new book by Emil Tornqvist entitled Bergman's Muses. Ingmar Bergman relates that "Strindberg's way of experiencing women is ambivalent." An "obsessive worshiper of women" he examines them obsessively, "most clearly in Miss Julie where the man and woman never stop swapping masks." Why sadness depicted in film is beautiful at all is because it belongs to the individual, faced or confronted by the other character or characters; the over the shoulder, shot reverse shot dialouge scene more often than not can be used within the structure of storyline to connect character and theme. If the superimposure in Persona is metaphoric, it may be that characters build a relation to what is thematic and connect to it when with other characters. How a film is constructed aesthetically is often a matter of emotion, those emotions of the viewer in relation to the text and those of the protagonist, interpellated as subject through identification, it being the text that can bring about spectatorial positioning. Birgitta Steene views the film as being constructed around the two characters and their "withdrawl from life and identification with one another". It could be seen that the scene is a reworking of the wearing of the theatrical mask, if not both the wearing and the removing of the mask, the thematic itself a mask untill both characters dissolve on the screen. In that the silence of God is not ostensibly reffered to during the film and the silence of the actress is, it being in fact a visual referrent, silence becomes a mask worn by the actress and a mask that could be worn by God as well. There is a shot early in Persona of Liv Ullmann in close up after the exit of the nurse, the camera stationary and her head motionless as the light changes during the shot; only when the room has become darkened does she move her head into profile-thematically the change in light is a similie for the putting on and taking off of theatrical masks as it slowly moves over her (it can only be a telescoped or subtle metaphor for orgasm or post-coital resolution the way it is filmed, despite its being a bedroom scene). Later in the film, Bibi Andersson nearly combines the silence of God and the silence of the actress by putting them both into question when she imploringly adresses that silence by claiming that artists create from and out of compassion, as does Bergman in the concluding montage sequence, in which the camera intercuts shot of Liv Ullmann as the actress on stage, in front of the camera with shots of Bibi Andersson silently leaving. The shots are dramaticly linked when cut togther and have a temporal continuity similar to the spatial continuity in the early close shot scenes. The concluding shots of the actress on stage are much like the shots of Max von Sydow that conclude the Ingmar Bergman film The Magician (The Face, Ansiktet), the mask that Volger has removed toward the end of the film being that of the thespian, the relationship between the writer and society being a theme that is often central to the early films of Ingmar Bergman, a relationship that can be extended to the actor in front of the camera, if not to in front of the camera posited as a disembodied spectator. In the first drafts of The Seventh Seal, of which there were five, Ingmar Bergman had written the role of the Knight (Max von Sydow) as having had been being silent, without dialouge. Death in the film, particularly after Bergman's having used the relationship between silence and a longing for belief or desire for faith as part of his characterization of the Knight, in many ways symbolizes silence and the unresponsiveness of the unknown, the game of chess a pursuit of something that is silent. Interestingly, Bergman on The Seventh Seal writes, "Bengt Ekerot and I agreed that Death should have the features of a white clown.", which leaves the question of whether it may in part only have its origins in Bergman's early aquaintance with silent film, whether the Knight is a medieval symbol not only of Death but also of art as a personification of the immortality of the artist in that art, after it has already been created, is silent- in being silent nothing can be added to it and it can have nothing to add. Bergman, in regard to the double exposure scene in Personna, writes that it was while filming the monolouge, which to allow both characters to mirror each other appears in two forms, that it was decided to add to the screenplay the shot of both faces merging into one face, it being improvised but only so much as the screenplay had already been written. During an interview Liv Ullmann has said, "We did not rehearse at all." and that Bergman only rehearsed before each individual shot, his having seldom rehearsed before the shooting of any film. She as well explains that the double exposure was "an idea he had thought about during the shooting." During an interview with Torsten Manns, Ingmar Bergman related, "The girls didn't know I meant to do that. It was an idea that came to me while we were shooting...They didn't recognize their own faces...Yes, it was easy to put the corresponding light sides together because one half of the scene is in virtual darkness." Writing about the scene having been filmed twice, John Simon views it as being that, "This repetition shows two identities sharing the same consciousness in one happening in time." In outlining the scene, Simon looks to The Stronger by August Strindberg, "The Stronger is a problem play, and one cannot be sure which of the two women really is stronger. And so it is in Persona." He notes that there is an uncertainty on the part of the spectator as to what is taking place in the scene. In a subchapter on the later film of Ingmar Bergman, Stephen Prince notes that Bergman has filmed the narrative so that why the actress is silent is inexplicable, his remarking upon there subsequently being an emptiness between the two characters; in his advancing that the superimposure creates a fictional third person it may be that Prince, while observing the theater of the two onscreen characters and their two masks, at first neglects to note that Bergman has filmed the two characters in the third person, behind the camera as though a spectator. During the interview, Stig Bj?rkman remarks upon Persona being shot mostly in close up and long shot, asking whether it was to contrast intimacy and detachment. Bergman replied that his decision to use close ups would often be contingent upon the content of the scene. Again discussing Persona, Bergman cautions, "But at the same time the long shot demands tremendous density and a hight degree of awareness. It must never be used at random." There is something, no matter how unintentional, that can metaphoricaly connect the character portrayed by Liv Ullmann and our image of Garbo, the reticient Greta Garbo that had fascinated the world at a distance, that had fascinated it sexually both on screen and after having left Hollywood. (The island that is the background in the film Persona is in fact remote, it serving as a metaphor for isolation and withdrawl.) There is a mystery to the eroticism of Greta Garbo. Writing in 1974, Richard Corliss concludes his volume Greta Garbo with a brief section about her retirement from film, claiming that neither she nor the studio had expected it. About her being reclusive and her need for solitude, he writes, "she became the chief curator of her film image by staying completely as possible out of the public eye." Objectively, it is the author's interpretation of a legend, written before Garbo had begun to again give interviews, particularly the conversation published in Bunte Illustierte, a magazine from West Germany, and yet, still, in the chapter it is almost as though the author writes to Garbo, "the woman she is today." Fredrick Sands writes about having interviewed Greta Garbo in 1977, "The Garbo I met still recoils at the sight of strangers...her shyness is not fiegned." She spoke fondly of Sweden and her hope that she might return. "She spends her days mostly walking, reading, waiting- 'I don't know what for.'" It is in keeping with earlier biographies that Sands mentions that her aquaintances would ask not to be quoted after having been interviewed. Sands gives the account that, "Garbo never answers the telephone at all unless she expects someone she wishes to talk to call her at a prearranged hour. Even then, she cannot be said to 'answer' the telephone: she simply picks up the reciever and waits for the caller to speak." It is by being integral to, an element of the image, as in Cries and Whispers (Viskingar och rop, 1972), within the image as being in motion either toward the foreground or background of the shot or toward either sides of the frame, that each character can be "integrated in the landscape in a completely different way" (Stig Bj?rkman) and that a director can seperate them "out from each other and show their oneness, or lack of oneness, with the enviornment." (Bj?rkman). There are two adjacent shots during Cries and Whispers where Ingmar Bergman reverses screen direction. A voice over delivers the line, "I remember she would often seek the solitude and peace of the grounds." and as the woman on the screen is walking slowly through a park, in the first shot she crosses the screen from left to right, in the second, from right to left. In both shots she is kept in longshot, the angle of her movement as her white gowned figure crosses similar in both shots, and what has a particular effect is the height of the trees; they are framed so that their top one fourth is above the frameline, the grove she is in seeming to contain ancient silence, ancient hollow space.As the two shots are adjacent, there is a unity of space between them. |
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Victor Sj?str?m had cautioned Bergman to "Film actors from the front; they like that and its the best way." In The Scarlet Letter (Den roda bokstaven, 1926, nine reels), Sj?str?m introduces Lillian Gish by filming her frontally in medium shot, frequently using dissolves during the film. After her leaving the frame, the camera cuts to a medium shot of her in profile and then back to filming her frontally in a mirror shot of her deciding which hat to wear. It is almost as though Sj?str?m uses reverse screen direction between two characters when, after structuring the film by reintroducing Gish with a dissolve, she one moment is crossing the screen from right to left, the next momement Lars Hanson crossing from left to right. Charles Affron writes, "Seastrom redefines the space of the town square, making it an area successively filled and emptied, now a formal pattern with paths cleared, then serried with ranks of extras. The church, the town hall and the scaffold are other spatial elements that constitute the dynamics of the public drama." Remarking upon Sj?str?m's "sensitivity to landscape and texture", Affron looks to their being a "stylistic unity" to the film. Lillian Gish, in her book Dorothy and Lillian Gish, writes of her having seen The Story of Gosta Berling and that, "Mr. Mayer sent to Sweden for Lars Hanson, let me have Victor Sj?str?m, the great Swedish artist, as director and put it into my hands. I worked with Frances Marion on the script, and we made a successful film that is regarded as a classic to this day." Ingmar Bergman has said that when directing Sj?str?m; it had in fact been that he "drew his attention to the fact that he was playing to the gallery." When the film was reviewed in the United States, Sj?str?m was seen as "painstaking in his studying his characters" and that there were "some cleverly pictured scenes in the church and the sights of the crowds betray(ed) imaginative direction both in the handling of the players and in their arrangement to the shades of their costumes." There had been an earlier film adapation of the novel, The Scarlett Letter (1917, five reels) starring Mary Martin, Stuart Holmes and Kittens Reichert, directed by Carl Harbaugh. There is an account of Sj?str?m's shooting the exterior scenes to The Scarlet Letter, during which he climbed down from a platform after Stiller had announced he was there, Stiller then saying, "This is Garbo."; Stiller and her had met Warner Oland and his wife, Anna Q. Nilson earlier. Warner Oland later began the series of films featuring the Earl Der Biggers detective with Charlie Chan Carries On and The Black Camel, both made in 1931. In the film Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie (Ingmar Bergman gor en film, 1963), Vilgot Sjöman begins with a brief synopsis of the film Winter Light before his interviewing director Ingmar Bergman. Bergman discusses his use of complete silence in the film, a silence that has fallen upon the character. He explains the use of the actors' eyes in the film. Edited into the film is behind the scenes footage, including numerous shots of Ingrid Thulin trying on various pairs of glasses. Sjöman shows Bergman filming and his methods of blocking, "The faces and the dialogue are to tell the whole story." Sjöman's camera films Bergman's tightly enough to fill half the screen with the same shot as Bergman's from a different angle. Sjöman then interviews Bergman during the postproduction of the film, "You always cut during movement. That way the flow isn't interrupted." All of the films of the Winter Light trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly (Sasom i spegel, 1961), Winter Light (Nattvardsgasterna, 1963) and The Silence (Tystnaden, 1963), were photographed by Sven Nykvist and scripted by director Ingmar Bergman. Katherina Farago was the script girl for to Ingmar Bergman's The Silence, which in fact only briefly opens silently with Gunnel Lindblom and Ingrid Thulin in a train compartment, both exhausted, the camera panning up on Gunnel Lindblom's tightly-fitted gown and curved body. As a sex-symbol, she has been deppened by the emotion of being drained, presumably from a journey. The metaphor of their being exhausted is kept intact by the camera shifting to the next interior, where, contrastingly, she crosses the set almost to avoid the camera, it briefly filming her from the knees down as she is waling, it near obliquely avoiding that she is in a dressing gown that outlines her movement. If , thematically, the mirror introduced early in the film is an objectification of an inward journey or, an objectification of the distance from which she is from the mirror spatially as a metaphor for her presently being on a journey itself, it is one that is reiterated throughout the film, as thoug it were a knowingness on the part of Lindblom. In a tub, bathing, the shimmer of water reflected upon her is almost to bring her nudity to a double symbol, it only being then in the film that the exhaustion on the train could be symbolic of her having tried to make love to God only to be tired of its being both fulfillment and the conception of the unattainable, the silence between both women being that they have found something that has only been answered in their exhaustion. Now within a calmness, the water fairly still while she bathes, the smoothness of her nudity complemented by her emotion of having been soothed. She then lays on a bed filmed horizontally over the shoulder, the semi-nudity filmed quickly from shot to shot, in bed, the curve of her hip motionless. She again is seen bathing, washing her face in two brief shots, which are in reverse angle, the first a strait-on shot, the camera panning out of frame during the second shot. She again is in front of the mirror, briefly, but not coyly, the camera then following her movement. Later, again in front of the mirror she pivots while undressing. Then seen in the mirror, after its presence has almost been replace by the camera, she is shown in an over the shoulder shot, combing her hair, pivoting during a close-up follow shot. During a later dialougue scene, the camera shows her in an evening gown as she is sitting, it almost being that she is aware of her being voluptuous, it quickly cutting to a reverse angle only to abruptly introduce a legnthy dialogue scene filmed in close shot in near darkness. The scene is continued as both actresses are filmed with sidelighting in closeshot in an adjacent room; in that it has been acknowledged by both women that they have been part of each other's journey, the exhaustion from earlier that seemed to have been left behind now is replaced be a quickness as events hasten within the film's plotline. Gunnel Lindblom moves through the adjacent scene as sex symbol, filmed nude in profile in tight medium close shot, only her being seen in the darkened room. That the scene itself is nearly silent is only later punctuated by Thulin's voice pronouncing the name of composer of classical music. She again passes the mirror in a post-coital scene, it being kept by the stationary camera to the far right of the frame as she walks toward the camera, the camera then cutting to her being filmed over the shoulder. One of the assistant directors to the concluding film of Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light trilogy, The Silence, was Lars Erik Liedholm, who directed the 1965 film June Night (Juninatt), photographed by Gunnar Fischer and written by Bengt Söderbergh. The film stars Bibi Andersson, Lennart Svensson, Vera Graffmann and Lena Hedström. Harry Schein appears on screen in the film. Jörn Donner began making films in Sweden during 1963 with Sunday in September (Sondag i september and To Love Att alska (1964). Both films were to star Harriet Andersson. Donner, after making two more films in Sweden, then went to Finnland to direct, beginning with Black on White (Mustaa valkoisella 1967). Harriet Andersson starred with actresses Marrit Hyattinen and Marja Packalen in the Jön Donner film Anna (1970). Jörn Donner recently was present at the Midnight Sun Film Festival, held in June of 2004. Hasse Ekman in 1963 directed My Love is a Rose (Min kara ar en ros) with Gunnel Lindblom and Gunnar Bj?rnstrand, the cinematographer to the film, Gunnar Fischer. The assistant director to the film, Christer Abrahamsen, later directed the film Drommen om Amerika (1976). Ekman followed by directing The Marriage Wrestler (Aktenskapsbrottaren, 1964) with Anna Sundqvist. Per G. Holmgren in 1963 directed Anna Sundqvist in the film Mordvapen till salu. Henning Carlsen directed his first film, Dilemma, in 1962, then following it with The Cats (Kattorna, 1965), photographed by Mac Ahlberg and starring Eva Dahlbeck, Gio Petre and Monica Nielsen, and with Hunger (Svalt, 1966) with Gunnel Lindblom. Swedish director Goran Gentele in 1963 returned Maud Hansson, who appears in Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal, to the screen in the film En vacker dag, the first film in which actress Inger Hayman was to appear. Jan Troell was behind the camera directing Max von Sydow during 1964 with the film Stay in Marshland (Uppehall i myrlandet). Karin Falk began in film as a director in 1964 with the film Dreamboy (Drompojken), written by Bengt Linder and photographed by Tony Forsberg. Starring in the film are Lena Soderblom, Lill Lindfors, Eva Stiberg and Sven-Bertil Taube. Falk later appeared as an actress in the 1974 film Rannstensungar, directed by Torgny Anderberg and starring Anita Lindblom, Monica Zetterlund and Monica Ekman. Swedish director Kage Gimtell during 1964 brought actress Anna Sundqvist to the screen in the film Alsking pa vift, the first film in which actress Victoria Kahn was to appear on the screen. Having written two plays during Bergman's period of Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, in 1964 actress Eva Dahlbeck began publishing novels with Home to Chaos (Hem till kaos). In 1965 she followed with the novel The Last Mirror (Sista Spegeln), in 1966 with the novel The Seventh Night (Dem sjunde natten) and in 1967 with the novel The Judgement (Domen). Based on the writings of Agnes von Krusenstjerm, Loving Couples (Alskande par, 1964) brought Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Gio Petre, Inga Landgre, Anita Bjork and Eva Dahlbeck to the screen under the direction of Mai Zetterling. Jan Halldoff directed his first two films in 1965, Haltimma, starring Karin Stenback and Bo Halldoff and Nilsson, starring G?sta Ekman. Vera Nordin in 1965 directed the film Pianolektionen, photographed by Gunnar Fischer. Ingela Romare directed her first two films in 1965, Kyrie, the assistant director to the film Ingvar Skogsberg, and Mitt ar efter morbor. Ingvar Skogsberg directed his first film in 1965 as well, Jessica Lockwood, his following it in 1966 with Krypkasino med T.T. and Stinsen. Summer Adventure (Ett sommaradventyr, 1965), starring Margit Carlqvist, was directed by Hakan Ersgard and written by Ov Tjernberg. The Vine Bridge (Lianbron), starring Harriet Andersson and Mai Zetterling, was directed in 1965 by Sven Nykvist. The Ballroom (Festivitessalongen) was produced by Sandrew Film in 1965 and was directed by Stig Ossian Ericson, who appears in the film with Swedish actress Lena Granhagen, Georg Rydeberg and Gosta Ekman. Bo Widerberg, author of the novel Autumn Term and the collected short stories Kissing, had directed his first film, The Pram (Barnvagnen) with Inger Taube in 1963, it being the first film in which Lena Brundin was to appear. His assistant, Roy Andersson would direct A Love Story (En Karlekshistoria) in 1970. During May of 2003, Andersson appeared at the Saga Theatre, Stockholm to introduce one of his films. Visiting One's Son (Besoka sin son, 1967) and To Fetch A Bicycle (Att hamta en cykel, 1968) were shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Inger Taube also starred in Bo Widerberg's film Karlek 65, which was the first film in which Eva-Britt Strandberg had appeared. Love 65 was photographed by cinematographer Jan Lindeström. That year Agneta Ekmanner, who appears in Widerberg's Love 65 as well, was seen too in her first film, Hej, directed by Jonas Cornell. Not only did Jan Troell in 1962 co-direct and photograph the the film A Boy with His Kite (Pojeken och draken), starring Bodil Mathiasson and Ulla Greta Starck, with Bo Widerberg, who wrote its manuscript, but Troell directed, wrote and photographed several other short television films, including Summertrain (Sommartag, 1961), New Years Eve in Skane (Nyar i Skane), The Ship (Baten), The Old Mill (De gamla kvarnen, 1964), again starring Bodil Mathiasson, and Spring in the Pastures of Dalby (Var i Dalby hage). In the film Elvira Madigan, Bo Widerberg's more obtrusive camerawork is during the opening sequence, the two lovers in a meadow, his camera quickly zooming in to them after cutting from shots of a little girl with a flower. He only briefly keeps Pia Dagermark in over the shoulder before cutting to another angle of her; she is often kept in close up, his using shot legnth to return to her close up. Although the sequence is intercut with shots of the soldier's regiment, for the most part the two lovers are kept on the screen together in brief shots from varying camera positions. Again, in an interior that is their bedroom, her closeups are fairly brief, the camera panning during a shot during which there is a cut that is nearly imperceptible. His zooming into close shot is also quick. The actress later in a profile close shot, Widerberg pans out of frame and then quickly cuts back to the previous shot of her; on thier bed together, she is again in close shot, her left shoulder bare while being filmed by the camera. Later in close shot, he pans down to show that she is knitting and when she is finally looking into the camera during a recital, he cuts back and forth between her close up and other shots of the room. Panning out of frame from one character and into frame to show the other, Widerberg quickly articulates the space between characters, or between them and what they are looking at, almost swishing, his then continuing to use brief shots from different positions. Pia Dagermark recieved the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, 1967. Nina Widerberg also appears in the film. The film was produced by AB Europa Film.
1966 also brough Christer Banck to the screen in the title role of Peter Kyllberg's film Jag. Also in the film are Tove Waltenburg, Agneta Anjou-Scram and Magaretha Bergström. The screenplay to the film was written by its director. In his book I Was Curious, diary of the making of a film, (Jag Var Nyfiken), Vilgot Sj?man offers daily entries during the shooting of a film that he hoped would " draw on the actors' own lives and ways of life for material." The girl in the film, portrayed by Lena Nyman, is "curious, lively, cute, with an extraordinary appetite for reality. She wants to know everything." Sj?man begins the diary with an account of a discussion he had had with Swedish film director Keene Fant, two scripts he had been writing, The Hotel Room and The Art of Breaking it Up and a script written by Kristina Hassrlgren that he had hoped to film, Bessie, and then continues to a dinner conversation with Ingmar Bergman where the two had discussed Sj?man's wanting to film with Lena Nyman. About the film, author Tytti Soila notes, "Most of its content was improvised and put together with the help of those who participated in the film," her calling it a "metafilm where the different planes of reality flow in and out of each other." I Am Curious Blue begins with there being actresesses interviewed by a film director, and then cuts to a group of women filmed in alternate close ups during a discussion on sex. There is a shot of two women in near profile in closeshot, one in the foreground of the shot, the other also in profile behind her within the same frame. Sjoman zooms on one of the women during a group shot of the women together. Intercut are scenes of him in a theater watching the rushes with Lena Nyman, who is then seen with him behind the camera. She begins being filmed in Stockholm's Tidninggen, near the water, wearing a tight skirt in profile, it almost being a mini-skirt. As to foreshadow, Sjoman, who often appears on the screen as an actor playing the director of the film, says, "A love scene without consequences would be pointless." The film almost cuts too quickly to a scene where Nyman is seen in bed with her lover before their both orgasming and quietly on a pillow in the darkened room with him in a post coital moment. The two wait to get dressed during their conversation, their being nude together as they talk possibly seeming prolonged compared to the legnth of the previous scene where they were in bed. The next scene begins with exterior shots of her kept in an introspective voice-over narrative, the scene itself being filmed mostly in a church and during a discussion on marriage, particularly in the churches of Sweden. It may seem as though the character is encountering what she sees as complacency within a culture then aspiring toward being moderately liberal, and yet this itself is for character interest, almost to where the actress in the film is kept too far from her sexual fantasies during the story line, and kept from disclosing them in as much as the plotline keeps it to the periphery. The story line is often kept minimal during the film, as though condensed as it follows Lena throughout its locations and yet the nudity is not entirely placed as being gratuituous be the film's being cenetered around her. Later, Lena Nyman is filmed at a lake in a nude swimming scene, her getting out of the water in full shot, in profile, the camera stationary as she moves in front of it. The camera is again stationary as she sits indian style by the waters edge. The scenes by the water are almost seperate from the scenes where she is making a film with Sjostrom. She is then filmed at what seems to be near dusk, watching two women making love, which ends abruptly as Lena leaves. Hakan Bergstrom had directed Lena Nyman in her first film, Fargligt lofte (1955), that year her also appearring in the film Luffaren och Rasmus. Ms. Nyman appeared in the film Skenbart (2003), directed by Peter Dalle and starring G?sta Ekman, Anna Bj?rk and Kristina Tornquist, its screenplay having had been being penned by Lars Noren. She has also recently filmed under the direction of Colin Nutley. The films of Vilot Sj?man were screened of at the Festival du Cinema Nordique during the second week in March, 2004. Having directed Gio Petre The Doll (Vaxdockan) with Per Oscarsson in 1962, Arne Mattsson also that year directed Eva Dahlbeck, Christina Schollin and Sigge Furst in Ticket to Paradise (Biljet till paradiset) and Anita Bjork and Lena Granhagen in Lady in White (Vita frun) . In 1963 he directed The Yellow Car (Den Gula bilen), starring Barbro Kollberg and Ulla Stromstedt and Yes He Has Been With Me (Det ar hos mig han har varit), based on a novel by Eva Seeberg and produced by Nordisk Tonefilm. Arne Mattsson followed in 1964 with Blue Boys. Arne Mattsson then directed Morianera (I the Body, 1965), a film which starred Eva Dahlbeck and Elsa Prawitz, A Woman of Darkness (Yngsjomordet, 1966) and Den Onda Cirkeln (1967), both which starred Gunnel Lindblom and Mordaren-en helt vanlig person (1967) with Allan Edwall. Before Hon Dansade en Sommar had been adapted to the screen by the director Arne Mattsson, the Swedish author of erotic literature, Per Olof Ekstrom had published his first novel, En Ensamme, in 1947. Mattsson was later to pair the actor and actress of the film together for a second film.
One of the most beautiful films to be shot in Sweden, although filmed with black and white stock, Inga (Jag en oskuld, 1967) introduced Marie Liljedahl to audiences in the United States. During the film, there is a dialouge scene that takes place in a suana during which the is a beautiful shot of her that dollies back before she comes toward the camera. During an early scene of the film, characters are kept at a diagnal to each other, one in the foreground of the shot, the other in the background, during their conversation. There is then a cut to a scene during which Greta is sunbathing and reintroduced to a former lover. Marie Liljedahl enters the film by entering a living room from what appears to have been her bedroom, as though already dressed for bed, she had returned to say good night; in the film she is about to leave to meet Greta, who is her aunt. Characters during the early scenes often deliver lines at a diagnal to each other, but in close shot, one behind the other at their shoulders, almost off to the side, as they both face the camera. Marie Liljedahl also appeared in the film Inga Two/The Seduction of Inga (Nagon att alska, 1971). Nearly titled Inga and Greta, the film was shot in part on location in Stockholm. The title sequence of the film opens with the camera dollying back on Marie Liljedahl about to get out of bed and then cuts to a shot of the camera panning up to film her in the shower in close shot, slowly beginning with a close shot of her feet, the water sliding downward on her skin and in front of the lens, it keeping her in near profile as it pans up to her nude hips and above them untill the actress is in close up. The camera then cuts to a shot of her dressing, as she puts on a pair of blue underwear and a flowered blouse as she is introduced by a voice over narrative. She is almost more beautiful filmed in color on the screen than in Inga during the first scens of the film, her long hair upon her shoulders framing her face, much as in the film Anna and Eve, which opens with a similar scene of the actress in a bedroom before getting dressed. She is demure with something reticient about her feminity as in the earlier film, there being a sensuality of her looking almost near the camera with her lips tightly closed and all expression left to her eyes. In an early scen she is shown in a retrospective narrative on her bed in a thin pink nightgown whith shots from the earlier Inga intercut, again with the use of a voiceover narrative, her questionin herself about her needing to be in love. She becomes the secretary for a writer of erotic novels, with whom she begins a romatic intrigue. She is exceptionally beautiful, quite possibly sultry shown making love, although only briefly on the screen, the curve of her hip and thigh in close shot. In a later scene she is again brought to the screen while making love, shown in close shot horizontally from only her shoulders to her knees. The director cuts to a post-coital scene to reveal her body more fully as she outs on a coat nude, in profile full shot, her shoulders pivoted so that the contour of her shoulder and outline of her breasts is within the frame, but the outline of her hips in three quarter profile is shot near over the shoulder, the back of her thigh toward the camera and her knees facing away from it as though hidden, the back of her calves toward it. In a later scene she is again filmed nude over the shoulder while dressing, her bending her knees to bring the camera and the beauty of movement into relationship, the actress silently graceful as the position of the camera waits during a stationary shot that ends a series of shots. The plotline of the film tightens as Inga is reunited with the novelist, who in turn is reunited with Greta, portrayed by Inger Sundh. It is brought to a near resolution with the line of dialougue, "Inga, I don't know what to say." She again dresses silently in front of the camera before Greta and Inga make love, their beginning noth on their knees, facing each other.
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