Gunnar Fischer, 1910-2011

The inspired, innov­at­ive cine­ma­to­graph­er was 100. He had not worked since the late ’70s.

Of course every­one will put up images from The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, and of course they should, but I wanted to illus­trate Fischer’s artistry with a pair of screen caps from Ingmar Bergman’s 1949 Thirst. The troubled couple Rut (Eva Hennig) and Bertil (Berger Malmsten) have anoth­er one of their fraught con­ver­sa­tions in their claus­tro­phobic train car, with Bertil play­ing with his cigar­ette light­er as Rut speaks. 

Look at the subtle way the flame from the ignited light­er illu­min­ates not just the fright­en­ing look on Bertil’s face but also seems to bright­en, just the tini­est bit, Rut’s cheek, the white of her right eye. It’s light­ing manip­u­la­tion, and light cap­ture, at an incred­ibly subtle and tech­no­lo­gic­ally advanced level. It’s the kind of almost spir­itu­al illu­min­a­tion that made Fischer such an excep­tion­al film artist and superb Bergman col­lab­or­at­or. R.I.P.