Bo Widerberg: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is pleased to present a retrospective of newly restored works from acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg, whose career began following the publication of 4 articles in the newspaper Expressen, written by the young cinephile to critically dissect the films being made and exported by Swedish filmmakers in the early 1960s. A stout modernist, Widerberg contended that every major new film being released in his country overtly lacked a quality of modernism that could relate Sweden’s national cinema to the reality of contemporary lived-experience, an issue Widerberg himself would seek to rectify behind the camera.

His feature film debut, THE BABY CARRIAGE, represented a stark contrast to the films he took issue with and contributed to a New Swedish Cinema on par with the New Waves developing across most of Europe during the early part of the decade. Widerberg’s films that followed often dealt with modern issues experienced by real people, such as the filmmaker dealing with marital struggles in LOVE 65, but even when he directed his celebrated period pieces, he offered his protagonists more tangible obstacles, rather than the existential ones faced by previous Swedish protagonists. In RAVEN’S END, an aspiring writer in 1936 strives to break free of his working class existence, and in ELVIRA MADIGAN, an odd couple with a complicated love affair struggle to build a life together due to unavoidable sociopolitical circumstances.

Widerberg’s belief in a realistic representation of Swedish society continued to lead him into the past. In the final film released in his prolific 1960s run, ÅDALEN 31, he presents the working class struggle in Sweden not as something exclusive to the modern world, but as an issue with roots in the country’s corrupt past, observable by labor demonstrations in 1931 met by military force. The theme of corruption persisted for Widerberg, whose cinema adapted to the popular genre films of the 1970s, most notably with THE MAN ON THE ROOF, an engrossing crime-thriller littered with murder, depravity, and endless questions intended to uncover the truth.