At the other end of the scale we find An Extraordinary Study in Human Degradation (En enastående studie i mänsklig förnedring), a microbudget film shot on a cell phone. In other words, contemporary Swedish cinema covers a wide spectrum. With a few exceptions we focus on those who have recently embarked on their film careers, or who have traveled only a short way down the road.

First, however, a few words about Ingmar Bergman (for web addresses see Links at the end of the section In Conclusion), easily the biggest name in Swedish film history. It is virtually impossible to write about Swedish cinema without saying at least something about the legendary Bergman. He is up there among screen giants such as Fellini, Fassbinder and Tarkovsky, and following his death in 2007, glowing epitaphs poured in from all corners of the world. Soon, however, people began to discuss his artistic legacy.

Does such a legacy really exist? Many say it does. Bergman was productive for so many years and his output for both stage and screen was so huge that anything else is unthinkable. If you look closely, you can find traces of Bergman in the work of most directors dealing with our inner landscape.

At the same time, however, the Swedish cinema scene has always been ambivalent towards Bergman—both the man and the myth. Among the new generation of filmmakers, few would admit to any direct inspiration from that particular quarter, and a decade or so ago someone even coined the phrase “Bergman lies like a wet blanket over Swedish cinema.” The old rebel, who always went his own way, was now considered an inhibiting force.

Also, when radical opinion reigned, many people on the political left felt he was too bourgeois to be considered a great artist, while the bourgeoisie (from which he came) saw him as a black sheep.

Now that he has quit the director’s chair for good, however, and the retrospectives and biographies are pouring in, most people agree that he was a giant of his era, a unique artist.

Ingmar Bergman was like no other: a creative mass of neuroses and demons. Which may of course be true of many people, but Bergman succeeded in describing his inner self, first on paper and then on stage and screen, and did so with such power and precision that his inner life became universally accessible and affected people profoundly all over the world.

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Fredrik Sahlin

Fredrik Sahlin has worked as a journalist and critic since 1991. He has been the resident film critic on Sveriges Television’s (SVT’s) cultural news program, Kulturnyheterna, since 2001, and also writes about cinema on a freelance basis. As the host of SVT’s Närbild (Closeup), he has interviewed some of Sweden’s foremost stage and screen performers. He co-authored the book Fucking Film and also served on the Nordic Council Film Prize jury in 2005–2007. Photo: Malena Rydell / Scanpix

Editor’s note: English title in italics: International English title. Non-italicized English title: A straight translation of the original Swedish title for the purposes of this publication.