Actor Erland Josephson, best known for his number of appearances in the films of Ingmar Bergman, died this past Saturday in Stockholm following a long battle against Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.
Josephson and Bergman’s collaboration goes back to when the actor was just 16 years old and the director cast him in a stage production of The Merchant Of Venice he was mounting. Bergman continued to cast josephson in a number of stage plays and when he moved on to film brought Josephson with him, starting with a small role in the 1946 film It Rains On Our Love. He continued to appear in Bergman’s films such as The Magician and Brink Of Life through the 50s and 60s.
International acclaim for his performance of Johan in 1973’s Scenes From A Marriage lead to him appearing in films such as Italian director Liliana Cavani’s 1977 Beyond Good And Evil, where he played played Friedrich Nietzsche, Philip Kaufman’s 1988 The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and made memorable performances in Andrey Tarkovskiy’s 1980s films Nostalghia and The Sacrifice.
