Swede Memories

WHEN he walks in the door, I recognize him at once. A man of striking appearance, with grey hair and his trademark beard, the Swedish actor explains in nearly flawless English that the only language he could speak is Swedish. He says he took up acting because he is a coward, just as he writes novels and screenplays out of necessity, though he incidentally has the "possibility to publish."

Since he was a young man, Erland Josephson has been acting on the stage and in film, and his association with director Ingmar Bergman is almost as old as his career. He says he first appeared on the stage in 1945 in a play which Bergman directed. And since that time, the two have collaborated on numerous plays, films and scripts.

Josephson says Bergman was directing all over Stockholm in both amateur and professional productions. "I was 15 or 16 and he was 20 or 21. He wanted to be experienced as soon as possible," Josephson says. "And then suddenly, he became the leader of a small theater in the south of Sweden." There the two cemented their friendship and collaboration.

Never formally trained in the profession, Josephson says he learned by working with Bergman and others. But because he never went to acting school, he believes that "my technique has never been thoroughly good."

Those who have seen him perform might disagree. His performance in Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage and Cries and Whispers and in Tarkovsky's Nostalgia and The Sacrifice have won Josephson universal acclaim in Europe and the United States. And those who have seen him perform in Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard--his American stage debut--know that he is equally powerful on the stage.

In fact, though Josephson is best known for his film acting, he says he never intended to go into films. "I am mainly a stage actor," Josephson says, adding that he was initially reluctant to do films because he thought he would have to forget technique. He says he never realized how fulfilling film could be until he experienced a sort of epiphany while shooting Cries and Whispers. At that moment, he got "a deep, sensual, personal contact with the camera."

Much of the credit, according to Josephson goes to Sven Nykvist, a cinematographer whom the actor credits with having a living relationship with the camera. And, says Josephson, when Bergman realized what had happened, the director grew inspired, tailoring his script to bring out the best in Josephson.

But working with Bergman is not always easy, Josephson says, calling the director "very controlling, but in a good way." He remembers one scene in Cries and Whispers in which he is fed an omelette by Liv Ullmann, a member of Bergman's troupe who Josepshson thinks is "a sort of genius."

But each time they shot the sequence, Bergman was dissatisfied. Finally, 13 omelettes later, Josephson grew so weary and upset that he gave the performance the director wanted.

"Ingmar was in a bad mood," Josephson says, adding, "He was using me to express that." The actor says he still feels like vomiting when he sees the scene and remembers the omelettes.

Nonetheless, Josephson has a lot of trust in his director. He never watches rushes of his films because he fears he will become self-conscious, holding his chin in the air in a ridiculous manner one day to correct a fault he saw in the previous day's performance.

Fortunately, Josephson's directors and audience are happy to do the watching for him.