Sven Nykvist, the distinguished 65-year-old Swedish cameraman who began his long association with Ingmar Bergman in 1953 and then branched out to work for everyone from Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice) to Bob Rafelson (The Postman Always Rings Twice) to Norman Jewison (Agnes of God) to Paul Mazursky (Willie & Phil), has been repeatedly voted the best cinematographer in the world. The question is: what does he consider the best of the best? What are the high points of the most impressive photographic career the movies have seen since colour came in?

Sipping a cup of coffee at Toronto's Royal York Hotel prior to yesterday afternoon's tribute organized by James Quandt at Harbourfront, the affable, bearded Nykvist offers a poker-faced stare and then plays a pair of aces. "The Sacrifice is the most interesting," he declares. "And Cries and Whispers." The former was the final film by Russian expatriate Andrei Tarkovsky and it won for Nykvist a special citation at the Cannes Film Festival; the latter is Bergman's masterpiece in which rooms express the states of mind of the characters–"Ingmar," Nykvist smiles, "has the feeling that the inside of the soul is red."

For his sold-out Harbourfront tribute, Nykvist chose clips from those films, and from Bergman's Winter Light and Fanny and Alexander, Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Louis Malle's Pretty Baby.

The Sacrifice closes with one of the most amazing sequences in movie history, an eight-minute single take in which a house belonging to a character played by actor Erland Josephson, himself the object of another Harbourfront tribute this evening, burns to the ground. "That was terrible," Nykvist recalls of the shooting. "It was a dream Tarkovsky had, this sequence, and he wanted to do it for 10 years. He wanted only one camera. I tried to hide another camera in the woods, but he found it. We rehearsed it for two days; we could not be better prepared. Then, my assistant told me the camera was running down in the middle of the take. When I had to tell Tarkovsky, he started almost to cry. We didn't have the money to rebuild the house. But then one of the producers went to Japan and found the money. The next time, we used two cameras, shooting exactly the same thing. So we got it."

Nykvist longed to work with Tarkovsky, who died of cancer prior to the commercial release of The Sacrifice, for a particular reason: "Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev was the most visual film I had ever seen. That learned me–you say in English learned me?–taught me–a lot. I was so happy when he asked me. His style was so different from the other directors; always he wanted very wide shots, always tracking of the camera, very little editing. I miss him very much."

For a man of Nykvist's age, missing is an inevitable part of life. "Bob Fosse," he says wistfully, reviewing his honour roll of the departed, "for him, I made Star 80. He was very visual, one of the most visual directors there was. We should have worked together in Cabaret, but another movie I was on went over schedule, then it was the same reason with All That Jazz. This is my biggest problem, you know, time. I wanted to make In Country for Norman Jewison this summer, but now, I must do the new Woody Allen. It of course does not have a title, but Gena Rowlands, Gene Hackman and Mia Farrow are in it. I start in New York at 7 tomorrow morning."

Allen is notorious for re-shooting, which is why it is difficult for Nykvist to commit to any project in the near future. "In the beginning, I did not think this re-shooting was any fun at all," he glowers. "He is privileged to work like that. But now, when it happens, I can see the mistakes I have done, and I have the chance to correct them. So now, I'm very positive to it."

Nykvist has directed several films of his own–The Vine Bridge in 1965 and, more recently, One & One in collaboration with Josephson and Ingrid Thulin–but he has no desire to make a career of running the show. "It is too hard a job," he shrugs. "Directors have to do everything. Ingmar Bergman won't make any more movies, I'm sure about it, absolutely. He says that he's too old. I understand. Earlier, when I was younger, I made about three pictures a year. Now, I try to make two. The flying around is okay when you're young, but the airplanes take a lot of strength from you. We always tend to forget how old we're getting."

Age has brought with it a mellowness that younger cinematographers who dream of becoming directors may find inscrutable. "They ask me, 'What directors give you the most freedom?' That is not so good, to have freedom. It's better to have a relationship with the director and to understand the story than to do what you want. If you don't have a relationship, you can have too much visual form. I have too many examples of that in my own movies. Too much 'freedom' means you spend time making beautiful pictures instead of following the script. Now, I try to tell the story instead of making it technically perfect. Now, I'm more or less a slave of the script."