Word: nykvist
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Based on Ivan Turgenev's novella, First Love is the deceptively elemental narrative of an adolescent smitten by his father's mistress. "It is a story unusually lit with affection and nature," says Schell. "I decided only one photographer could really do it-Sven Nykvist, the artist who does Bergman's films. When he agreed I knew the picture would happen, and that it would work." Schell's instinct has proved infallible. Nykvist has filled the film with indelible imagery. The sunlight is a featured player of humor and warmth. Interiors seem to exhale melancholy. Weightless...
...color provides one of the few pleasant aspects of the film. (Bergman's only other try at color proved dismal in All These Women [1964], an unsuccessful sex comedy, and he has avoided it until now.) Cool gold and turquoise pastels predominate in the soft, grainy texture of Sven Nykvist's photography. Bergman wanted a lyrical-but-resigned-to-suffering flavor and certainly...
...effect," says Wrede, "is supposed to come from focusing on details-cadging an extra bowl of food, finding half a cigarette, making a compassionate gesture. We're being very wary of pretty pictures, those Zhivago-style long wide shots." His cameraman is Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, whose austere lens could seek out the gloom in a travel poster...
...literal level. Von Sydow is also the Creative Artist beset by the bourgeoisie; the island is a metaphor of man's tragic isolation from :he mainland of humanity. Though he has glaring faults as a scenarist, Director Bergman is supreme in handling us troupe; the actors, like Sven Nykvist's phosphorescent photography can ender reality and surreality without missing a heartbeat. Von Sydow is gothically brilliant as the madman; Ullman's ragedienne reinforces her position-already secured by Persona-as one of Scandmavia's major actresses. If in the nd, the Hour of the Wolf suffers...