Star of Bergman films, Erland Josephson, dead

Swedish stage and screen actor Erland Josephson, best known for his roles in legendary director Ingmar Bergman's films, has died at age 88, Swedish radio reported on Sunday.

"Erland Josephson passed away during the night, 88 years old," the radio said, citing his family.

He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Josephson, one of Sweden's greatest actors, starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage", a made-for-television series that aired in 1972 and was adapted to the big screen in 1973.

It was the film that introduced Josephson to a broad international audience, though his collaboration with Bergman began in the 1930s when the young pair worked together in the theatre.

They remained lifelong friends.

After Bergman's death in 2007, Josephson explained how he felt about the director in an interview with Sweden's newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter.

"I am of course very, very attached to him. We have had a very fun and exciting and interesting life together, not always but periodically," he said, noting that in Bergman's last years they spoke on the phone every Saturday.

Among the films the duo worked on together were "The Touch" (1971), "Cries and Whispers" (1972), "Face to Face" (1976), "Autumn Sonata" (1978), "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), "Faithless" (2000) and "Saraband" (2003).

Bergman often gave Josephson roles where he could have been playing Bergman himself, and in "Faithless" Josephson's character was even named Bergman.

"But I don't think Bergman was as boring as the roles I played," he told Dagens Nyheter.

"I played the side of him that he thought was cold, cynical, tired, sometimes the fiasco," he added.

In "Saraband", where Bergman brought back the characters of Johan and Marianne from "Scenes from a Marriage" three decades later, Josephson portrayed Johan as a mean old man.

His performance stunned Bergman, who had no idea his dear friend had it in him to play someone so cruel.

"The malice is oozing out of him, out of every bloody pore," Bergman said.

Asked what life would be like without Bergman after his death, he told Dagens Nyheter: "He's still with me ... He hasn't only been, but still is, a very important conversation partner in life, even now when he's gone."

Josephson, whose curly red hair turned silver with age and who often sported a beard, also played leading roles in Andrey Tarkovskiy's "Nostalghia" (1983) and "The Sacrifice" (1986).

He also appeared in the 1988 adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".

Josephson succeeded Bergman as director of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1966, a position he held until 1975. He also headed city theatres in Helsingborg and Gothenburg.

Tributes poured in on the news of Josephson's death.

"A lot of people in the cultural sphere have worked with Erland over decades and many will be moved and saddened. He was a playwright, actor, theatre director, film director and a writer," the Royal Dramatic Theatre's chief dramaturge Magnus Florin told Dagens Nyheter.

Actor Boerje Ahlstedt worked with Josephson when he was head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

"He was one of the best bosses I had at the Royal Dramatic Theatre... His intelligence paired with his sense of humour was unbeatable," he said.
 

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