Lena Nyman Movies

A tiny theatrical company turns into a war zone of egos as a new play goes into rehearsal in this broad comedy from Sweden. A camera crew from a television outlet is on hand to shoot a commercial as a harried director (Tova Mahnusson Norling) tries to put her cast through their paces. Not everyone, however, feels like cooperating; her two leading men (Orjan Ramberg and Dan Ekborg) seem to be competing over who gets most of the spotlight, much to the annoyance of the female star (Lena Nyman), while the troupe's makeup artist (Gosta Ekman) has a plan of his own. Puder was written and directed by Marie-Louise Ekman, whose husband Gosta Ekman plays the flamboyantly gay makeup man. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This fascinating tribute to Scandinavian film is Sweden's entry in the British-Film-Institute-sponsored international celebration of the centennial of motion pictures. Filmmaker Stig Bjorkman has actress Lena Nyman guide this film tour that begins with Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film Persona. Many subsequent film clips featuring famed performers, directors and scenes are presented. Among the directors featured are Victor Sjostrom, Carl Th. Dreyer, Bergman, and Aki Kaurismaki. In addition to clips, interviews and narration are also utilized. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this pleasant but largely uneventful comedy, a men's choir from Iceland goes on a long-planned tour of Germany and Sweden, despite the death of their choir-leader. Untutored in the big-city ways on the European continent, these gentle and relatively unsophisticated men have a number of adventures (romantic and otherwise) and survive to tell the tale of them back home. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The Ture Sventon detective novels and stories by Ake Holmberg have delighted generations of Swedish youngsters. This somewhat stylized film takes the private detective on a search for a famous horse stolen from the circus. The clever language of the novel this film is based on enlivens narrated sections. The filmmakers chose to minimize the magical aspects of the novel and to present the action in a larger-than-life manner harking back to silent films. Given the iconic status of the novels, neither decision pleased those reviewers who were familiar with them. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Well-known Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (the "Pippi Longstocking" series) wrote the screenplay for this entertaining fantasy about Ronya, a 10-year-old girl (Hanna Zoetterberg) who lives quite happily in her father's castle and has no problems until she comes across Birk (Dan Hafström), a playmate encountered in the dark and fascinating forest near the castle. Birk and Ronya explore the wilderness with great courage and curiosity, braving the dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes as they go along. But their respective families are angry when they find out the two children have been playing together, and they forbid them to see each other again. The fathers of Birk and Ronya are bitter enemies -- they are robber chieftains leading opposing forces. It will not be easy for the two spunky children to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The real Rakenstam, the subject of this fictional treatment of his life from 1942-1945 before his imprisonment, had romantic liaisons with hundreds of women over a three-year period and managed to scam large amounts of money from 120 of them, thriving off each one and somehow managing to make each believe she was the only woman in his life. He was 42 at the time he started these exploits, and even after he was caught because of a blackmailer, the women not only refused to sue him, but they filled his jail cell with roses. While his deception was a work in progress, there were many moments of anxiety (he had been engaged to two of the women) as he tried to juggle the women, pay off the blackmailer, and maintain his identity as a businessman or banker. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Rasmus (Erik Lindgren) is a little orphan whose need for companionship leads him to seek the friendship of a hobo accordian player (Allan Edwall). The two hit it off quite well, and the hobo decides he has to somehow try to find a home for himself and the boy - though that does not look like a very viable option from the start. Side stories help fill in the three 25-minutes segments of this somewhat bland tale. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Orlanda is a nurse, living and working in Stockholm, who dabbles at hippyish ways and who has one close woman-friend, a suicidal artist. She has a love affair with a Swedish diplomat who has been temporarily posted at home. When he returns to South America on assignment, she comes to visit him. There, she discovers that he is really committed to living the stuffy, circumscribed life of a career diplomat, and she begins to lose interest in him. Instead, she begins an affair with a local Marxist revolutionary and gets involved with his group's activities. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is an acclaimed concert pianist who is visiting her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann), the wife of a parson in a rural community, for the first time in seven years. While Charlotte and Eva struggle to be civil, there is a deep emotional gulf between them. Eva resents her mother for not caring enough for her as a child, feeling that Charlotte was more interested in her career and her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is severely handicapped and can only communicate through inarticulate noises. Charlotte, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with the fact that Helena now lives with Eva, and she is still coming to terms with the emotional devastation of her husband's recent death. Herbstsonate, released in America as Autumn Sonata, earned Ingrid Bergman some of the most enthusiastic acclaim of her career; she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and she won the same honor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. It was also her last theatrical release; she would appear in only one more project, a TV movie about the life of Golda Meir, before her death in 1982. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Tvaa kvinnor is two separate shorter films gathered under one title. The first, "The White Wall," stars Harriet Andersson as a divorcee, with a son to raise, who finds her pleasure where she can. The movie shows her picking her son up at school and looking for (unskilled) office work. The second, "Five Days At Falkoebing," chronicles the experience of a young actress during her return to her childhood home. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

One of the most popular and controversial films in Swedish history, I Am Curious brought the sexual revolution to Sweden's silver screen. While much of the media hype centered on the film's scandalous content, the film's blending of documentary and fictional footage was equally shocking for Swedish audiences. Content-wise, the film's more controversial parts include the defacement of a photograph of Franco and a sequence where a young couple has sex in front of the royal palace. A film in two parts, Yellow and Blue each have essentially the same vague outline of a plot. Lena and her boyfriend engage in lots of liberated sexual play -- that's the fiction. At the same time, they are working on a documentary, which is real. In the documentary footage, they investigate Sweden's political history, the state of its democracy, and the everyday lives of its citizens. In the Blue version, Lena journeys far into the deserted north, filming the beautiful wilderness and revealing a decidedly unmodern Sweden. Blue's most significant departure from the first part is in this exploration of Sweden's pastoral ideal. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide