American filmmakers who hire Sven Nykvist hope that some of Ingmar Bergman's magic will rub off with Nykvist on the set. The result, however, is that Nykvist's American filmography is almost entirely a list of far-from-Bergmanesque movies: The Dove (1974), Pretty Baby (1978), Hurricane (1979), King of the Gypsies (1979), Starting Over (1979), Willie & Phil (1980), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Cannery Row (1982), Agnes of God (1985), Dream Lover (1986), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Another Woman (1988), and the "Oedipus Wrecks" chapter of New York Stories (1989).

Gentlemanly and kind-eyed, Nykvist doesn't resent being reduced to a brand name. He speaks quietly in firm, sociable Swedish-accented English and talks of his gratitude at being accepted by the American film industry. "I have a little difficulty with American scripts," he explains, "because they don't mention mood or atmosphere or how it looks. You just read dialogue. With Bergman how the scene must look, the atmosphere, and the weather were written into the script."

Nykvist's cultivation serves him well; he respects both high and middlebrow intellectualism, making him the rarest of "techies." He is, after all, the cinematographer who moved his craft onto a philosophical plane.

Born in Sweden in 1924, Nykvist spent almost two decades working as an assistant photographer at Sandrew movie studios, studying at the Stockholm Municipal School for Photographers and working at Cinecitta in Rome. He shot documentaries in Africa where his Lutheran parents were missionaries, and was director of photography on dozens of feature-length films. Then, in 1967, he shot Bergman's epochal Persona.

It was Bergman's first film to show a consciousness of modernism, mixing scenes of artistic process and female psychological stress. Nykvist stylized silent film parody and theatre and soundstage vérité, with the emotionally saturated storyline. He distilled the different kinds of light (and vision) like a prism, giving Persona a hyper-realistic look. Shooting close-up, the cinematographer caught Bibi Andersson's and Liv Ullmann's most intimate expressions. Unlike the glamorous star close-ups of the 1920's which implied adoration, Nykvist gave Bergman the effect of looking at the actors from the inside out: a post-analytic God's-eye-view.

He further refined this crystalline b&w style in Shame (1968), followed by two Bergman colour experiments, The Touch (1971) and The Passion of Anna (1970). But he achieved absolute chromatic mastery with Cries and Whispers in 1972, and the whole world widened its eyes. The film had the richest red, white and black colour scheme while keeping the images cooly distinct. In his close-ups, Nykvist created a breathtaking balance between the red backgrounds and Ullmann's blue eyes; the exteriors were vibrant, almost fiery, summer landscapes.

This visual intensity marked the end of the art-house phenomenon that inspired two, perhaps three generations of American filmmakers. It was also the last great moment when an international audience, representing a vanguard of cinematic taste, responded en masse to a specific (cerebral Scandinavian) cultural expression. And the triumph was the cinematographer's: he added a dimension to how we perceive natural lighting.

Nykvist's subsequent ambassadorship across Europe (Conrad Rooks' Siddhartha, 1973; Roman Polanski's The Tenant, 1976; Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, 1988; Volker Schlondorff's Swann in Love, 1984–continues the artistic advances made under Bergman, though so far it's been like watching Albert Einstein on speaking tour opening supermarkets. The relativity of Nykvist's natural lighting theories however, are inappropriate for directors without Bergman's visual sense. This is most embarrassing on faux Bergman projects like The Sacrifice, a dark-on-dark attenuation of Shame, and the brownnosing Woody Allen films like the drab, static Another Woman or "Oedipus Wrecks," which was a visual affront. Billed alongside his peers Nestor Almendros and Vittorio Storaro on New York Stories, Nykvist's work seemed pitifully unaesthetic.

Unfortunately, Nykvist has yet to meet his match in an American director. However, the cinematographer whose 16mm The Magic Flute (blown up to 35mm) has the finest colour resolution ever seen in that medium can't be discounted yet. Someday his Bergman will come.

–Armond White

Are American directors intimidated by your reputation?

I usually don't have any difficulties. We find a way to talk very quickly. As soon as you talk about films, it's very easy. I know about their work, they know about mine, so we don't start from scratch. And then, of course, we start to discuss the pictures we are going to make.

Do American directors want you to repeat your work for Bergman?

They want to know a little about the work with Bergman, but it's important for me to change my style for every picture. The crucial thing is the script and my relationship with the director. Then I can say yes or no to a picture.

Woody Allen is known for his Bergmania. Did he press you on that subject?

I wondered about that myself. Is he going to talk about Bergman? But he had his script, and I had to follow it. I don't think we ever mentioned Bergman. We always had a very good collaboration.

What do you think of the way Interiors imitated the compositions in Cries and Whispers?

I was a little surprised. [According to a source], they studied Bergman pictures at the editing table. But that's OK. It's not so easy for one cinematographer to copy another's work, because it goes against his will, because he wants to add his style to the picture. I once met with Bergman and Fellini, and Fellini said, "Oh, that shot (and so on) I stole from you, Ingmar." And Ingmar said, 'And that shot I stole from you." So we give and take, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's how you get ideas.

Do you think you have a recognizable style?

The most important thing is to change the style for each picture. I ask myself how can I help the audience to look at the right thing: is it the actors, or the dialogue, or the mood, or so on. I am not a good technician, although that's my background.

Isn't the essence of a good technician knowing what's needed?

If I have a good lens and a camera that is steady, that's enough. I'm not crazy about the new toys that come up each year. I like simplicity. It's taken me 30 years to come up with simplicity. So I don't use diffusion filters or colour filters on the lens. I use colour filters on the lights, because if you use it on the camera and it's not right, then the labs cannot do anything about it. But if you are clean–no filters at all–you can get the same result in the lab.

On Winter Light (1963) we tried to find out something about film lighting: how do we light to make it look real? The French Nouvelle Vague directors were then shooting on location. So, we started to shoot on location in Sweden, and I found I could get a much more realistic atmosphere.

This also applied to composition. We were so restricted that we were simple, because we didn't have a choice. That helped me later when I came into the studio. I asked for a ceiling on the set so that I wouldn't be able to use lights. Bergman and I promised each other that we would not have any shadows at all. So we started to use indirect lighting-bounced lighting. Except for the 30 seconds when sunlight walks through the church; the light we used is important and has meaning.

Do you prefer colour or black-and-white?

I always said I preferred b&w but I think it's almost impossible now. Labs often cannot time it right or they're not used to it. We had a terrible problem with Life of the Marionettes. On The Sacrifice, or the night sequence we took away red and blue in the lab. So it was not b&w, it was colour; but different–monocolour.

Doesn't that devalue your craft?

No. Even if the audience did not see what we did–and they shouldn't have–it gave a dramatic feeling to that sequence. Do you think it was too dark?

Yes. Absolutely.

That could be just the print. You know we are in the hands of the labs.

You have said that you cannot put straight light into the face. Your close-ups with Bergman are very special. Why is that?

The face is a world in itself. I think it is almost my specialty. If you are interested in human beings, you must be interested in faces. I always try to catch light in the actors' eyes, because I feel the eyes are the mirror of the soul. Some directors are annoyed at seeing reflections in the eyes. But there are always reflections in the eyes; some people just don't think about it. I feel that if I have that reflection, you can see the human being thinking. There's a presence there.