10/25/09

Gunnar Björnstrand

Gunnar Björnstrand was Ingmar Bergman's top leading man throughout his films of the 1950s, until time and age ceded that title to Max Von Sydow.

Here is a clip from Winter Light:


Watch Winter Light (1962, Ingmar Bergman) in Culture  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I wrote:

'Winter Light is simply one of the greatest Socratic dialogues ever put to film, and as close to perfect a screenplay as a mortal is likely to produce. The acting, in every single role, is pitch perfect, yet Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin gives one of the great dominant female performances in film history, as Märta Lundberg, an atheistic substitute school teacher in a small town with a now unrequited love for a Lutheran Pastor named Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), head of a church whose congregation has dwindled to a handful. The gorgeous Thulin is at her frumpiest and dowdiest looking in this film, and it seems that after an illness, she lost the affection of Tomas, with whom she had lived with for two years.'


It is also, if not Björnstrand's best performance, certainly his best in a very important film.