I met Sven on Schlöndorff’s A Love of Swann, in 1983. This encounter was to me like one of those amazing gifts that filmmaking sometimes unexpectedly gives us. Like Bertolucci with Storaro, Truffaut with Almendros, Bergman and his films always seemed to follow Sven. When you met him, you met more than just a man.
Dominique Le Rigoleur, Volker Schlöndorff, Sven Nykvist, Balthazar, chef machiniste (photo Georges Pierre)
This was for me one of the most wonderful and enriching experiences of my life. Sven wanted the cameraman to do (...)
I trained with Nykvist after graduating from IDHEC. His simplicity and his wisdom were heartbreaking; everything was related with him, and he was poles apart from the histrionics of filmmaking, passing on his knowledge without affectation nor ulterior motive.
« I was greatly saddened to hear that Sven Nykvist died. He was a brilliant photographer and a wonderful man. My whole young adulthood was full of dazzling cinematic images that he was responsible for. It was an honor to have worked with him and a treat to have spent time in his company. »
I met Sven Nykvist through Louis Malle. Tonino Delli Colli, whom I had assisted on Lacombe Lucien, was unavailable for Blackmoon - a strange film, without dialogues, starring Joe D’Alessandro and Alexandra Stewart.
My intention is not, via this short text, to pay a tribute to Nykvist’s artistic and technical qualities, as they have been, in the past decades, internationally recognized and analyzed by specialists much more qualified than I am; I simply wish to touch on those exceptional human qualities of his that would transform any encounter with him into unforgettable memories.
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