[SOUND] In Sweden, Bo Widerberg became an essential figure with his two first feature films The Pram and Ravens End. From 1962 and 63. Both films combine, a realist style with slightly modernist elements. The Pram is contemporary, and it's characters are situated in a social reality. However, the factories, concrete buildings, and streets of the city of Malmo become a setting for a far more personal story about Brit. A young girl who becomes involved with two very different guys, gets pregnant and choose to live on her own. The films without firm closure. We just see Brit walking with her baby in her pram as the film ends, and the flashes from the sun mirrored in the windows. A poetic, symbolic and very open ending, typical of its time. [MUSIC] Widerberg's next film, Ravens End, was taken place back in time in the 30s of Sweden. As such it indicated that Widerberg's concern for contemporary realities did not prevent him from finding historical material and setting the scene in the past. It is the story of a poet coming of age. It combined lyricism and social portrait, a combination which was also seen later in his Adalen 31 from 1969. Even though this was a more explicit political film. However, Widerberg achieved his international reputation with Elvira Madigan from 1967. It was nominated in Cannes as best film. Won a Golden Globe for best foreign film. And its female lead Pia Degermark, won a Palme Dor as best female actress. The film was based on a true story that took place in 1889, and features a young couple on the run. It had a loose narrative form, abrupt editing and stunning pictures of sunny Swedish landscapes in warm colors. Pictures in which Widerberg had his two lead roles pose in sensual, but stylized compositions right up to the tragic ending in which they commit suicide. A Liebestod ,that contrasts with the scenic beauty. Also the film turned the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concert Number 21 into its own signature tune, to such an extent that people even today tend to hear the music not as much as music by Mozart, but as the famous Elvira Madigan motive. [MUSIC] The Dane Henning Carlsen made his first feature film illegally in South Africa. The title was Dilemma and it was adopted from a novel by the Noble Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer. It premiered in 1962, and its narrative featured an English Lawyer coming to South Africa where he in a society defined by the apartheid system. Becomes friend with black musician, and establishes an erotic relation with a white upper-class woman. >> We got married before mixed marriages became illegal. It was difficult all right even trying to find some place decent to live. >> And your family? >> I got off quite lucky, they dropped me. They wanted to forget about me quickly. I think they really did believe I was crazy. They could be less ashamed of me that way. What sane white girl, could want to marry a colored man? Let alone a good afrikaans girl like me. >> The film was shot, in a semi documentary style. As a typical anti-hero of the 60s, the main character does not really make a choice between the two worlds of a black and white South Africa, but flows along with the events right up until his musician friend is killed. The social world sets the scene in this film. But, it also has a fleeting poetic quality to it. Which despite its political content, is a narrative with a subjective perspective. And a narrative formed by accidental meetings. These two features, so typical for the new wave cinemas, also in Scandinavia. Made the film into something else, than a simple, social problem drama or social issue film. Existential matters were the core issues and the social world was not as much main theme, but functioned like a scene for human beings, a search for meaning and confidence in others. With Hunger from 1966, Carlsen made his most known film. As also happened to Widerbergs Elvira Madigan the year after. Hunger was nominated at the Cannes Festival for best movie. The film focuses on a poor, and starving wannabe writer, who wanders around, about in Christiania in Norway in the late 18th century. What is nowadays named Oslo. Despite it's historical scene, the film succeeded in recreating the modernist impulse, that is characteristic of Hamsuns original novel. Especially in its depiction of its starving protagonist. His hallucinations. His nervousness. And his momentary megalamonia, are mirrored in a style that combines realist and expressionist techniques. The camera often seems uneasy and the mental state of the protagonist is echoed in the eerie to atonal music, point of view shots, zooms, panning and abrupt editing. And likewise the film contains dream sequences, with overexposed pictures, strange situations and an unnaturally silent soundtrack. However this subjective expressionism was combined with realist features, into a film that balanced existential modernism and an existential social portrait. >> [FOREIGN]. >> [FOREIGN]. [SOUND]. >> [FOREIGN]. >> [FOREIGN]. >> Likewise, Norway had their modernist director in Pål Løkkeberg, a man of the theater that only made two feature films, Liv and Exit. These two films, however, was to make a lasting mark, and become an inspiration for other Norwegian film makers, in the years to come. The story of Liv from 1967, took place during a single day in a woman's life in Oslo. Its narrative was fragmentary and it emphasized situation and accidental meetings. Its female title character was impersonated by Vibeke Lokkeberg, the wife of the Film's Director. And it combined stylized compositions and cinema verite, verite-like filming in ways very much inspired by Jean Luc Godard in France. Inspired also in the sense that, also Godard had used his Danish wife Anna Karina, in a lead role in Vivre sa Vie back in 1962. The themes of Liv centered on gender issues related to visual culture, and accordingly, its female lead acts as model. Also Exit, from 1970, had Vibeke Løkkeberg as its lead character, and was even more modernist in style. In a way these two films brought contemporary cinema into Norwegian film making. Next to Widerberg. Jan Troell is the most important Swedish New Wave Director. He started as a photographer for Widerberg, but made his first film in which he was both Director and photographer, with Here's Your Life from 1966, based on a novel by another Nobel Prize winner, Eyvind Johnson, and taking place in the early decades of the 20th century. It follows its young protagonist, having different jobs and relations, and is narrated in a condensed elliptical form and with a poetic mythic beauty to it. Troells camera work and editing is always very visible. And further if Bergman had something with faces and close-up compositions, Troell certainly had a thing with hands. During conversations, the camera often focused on the speaker's hands that become sort of an expressive vehicle with a life of, of its own. For example the man telling stories in the train, in one of the opening scenes of Here's Your Life. Or, in the final confrontation between the young protagonist, and the older woman to who, whom, he has had an erotic relation. During the heights of her emotional outbursts, the close up of the camera does not focus on her face, but on her hands. The thing about waves is that they come to an end. In Denmark and Norway, there was a tendency towards going back to old genres or to make political films in the early 70s. In Denmark Palle Kjaerulff-Schmidt began to make television plays. And in Sweden Jan Troell made long films, that were also turned into television series. Most famously was The Immigrants in 1971. And The New Land in 1972. Widerberg began making genre movies. So to sum up, the New Wave cinema of Scandinavia left lasting masterpieces of film art, that inspired future Directors, and Audiences. It was also pivotal to new film culture that no longer saw film as primarily entertainment but, but as an art form and a central part of national culture. The new wave in Scandinavia also made an impact, on new film laws in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway for which films now could earn public support and Denmark started a national film school. This governmental support was essential to the continuation of realism, genre experiments and other film modes of film making that has continued into the 21st century in Scandinavian cinemas. In these ways, the Scandinavian new wave, not only resulted in many great films in its in its own time. But, it also made a lasting mark in Scandinavian film cultures up until today.
