Jan Troell

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Jan Troell at the Stockholm International Film Festival , 2012

Jan Troell ( pronunciation : [ ˌ ʝɑːn tʁʊˈɛlː ], born July 23, 1931 in Malmö-Limhamn ) is a Swedish film director , cameraman , screenwriter and film editor . In his home country he is counted among the most important filmmakers alongside Ingmar Bergman . In 1973 he was the first Swede to be nominated for an Oscar for directing for the film adaptation of Vilhelm Moberg's novel Emigranten (1971) .

biography

Training and first short films

Jan Troell was born in Limhamn, a working-class district of Malmö, in 1931, where he grew up and went to school. The son of a dentist completed his military service after his school education before he decided to study education . After completing his studies in 1953, Troell worked for nine years as a primary school teacher at the Sorgenfri School in Malmö, where he first worked on 8mm film from 1956 , which he directed together with students. At the beginning of the 1960s, Troell gave himself completely to work as a filmmaker. With Sommerzug (1960) and Das Schiff (1961) he made his first short films for Swedish television and met Bo Widerberg . The Swedish director hired Troell as cameraman for his black and white short film Pojken och draken in 1962 . A year later they worked together again when Troell was responsible for the camera work on Widerberg's debut feature film, Kinderwagen . In 1964 Jan Troll directed the short film Stay in the Marschland (original title: Uppehåll i myrlandet ), which together with works by Rolf Clemens, Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, Maunu Kurkvaara and Klaus Rifbjerg formed the episode film 4 × 4 . The 30-minute contribution in black and white is based on the short story of the same name by Eyvind Johnson and reports on a railroad worker (played by Max von Sydow ) who turns his back on his day-to-day work and flees into a moorland. For his stay in the marshland in April 1967 at the 13th West German Short Film Festival, Troell received the Interfilm Prize from the International Evangelical Film Center , while he was to work with Max von Sydow several times in his career.

In 1966, Troell's feature film debut, Here you have your life , followed, in which, as later with most of his films, he was responsible for the film script as well as editing and the camera. The drama, which is again based on a story by Eyvind Johnson, focuses on a 14-year-old Swedish foster boy (played by Eddie Axberg) who learned about the labor movement and socialism between 1913 and 1919 and matures into an adult. The 170-minute long film, which Jan Troell later shortened considerably, was praised by the critics as an “epically broad-based first film with a calm plot” , “which impresses with its formally balanced poetic design and human attitude” . For Here you have your life Troell won the Swedish Guldbagge film award as best director in 1967 and was represented in the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in the same year , where he again received the award from the International Evangelical Film Center. Jan Troell won the Golden Bear of the Berlinale a year later for the drama Raus bist du (1968). The Swedish filmmaker's second feature film, again shot in black and white, was based on a novel by Clas Engström , who, like Troell and his long-time co-screenwriter Bengt Forslund, had been a former elementary school teacher. You're out tells the story of elementary school teacher Mårtensson (played by Per Oscarsson ), whose marriage broke up and who lost control of his students. The drama, filmed at Troell's former workplace, the Sorgefri School, was largely criticized by the film service . “The students are little devils from the start; Social implications that could trigger Martensson's behavior beyond individual predisposition remain marginal, are almost non-existent, ” said the film journalist Franz Everschor in 1969 .

Success with large-scale productions

After the success of Raus bist du , three years should pass before Jan Troell should draw attention to himself again. For his next project he chose the romantic tetralogy Romanen om utvandrarna by the Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg as the subject of two film adaptations. The American director John Ford had tried in vain for the material years earlier . Emigranten (1971) and Das neue Land (1972) were both shot one after the other, but at the insistence of the distributor they were released in the cinemas at different times . The two self-contained epics, over three hours long, starring Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow, portray a southern Swedish farming family living in poverty who set out to emigrate to the USA around 1850. Filmed on original locations in southern Sweden, Minnesota and Wisconsin , Troell's literary film adaptations, which are also known in Germany under the titles The Emigrants and The New Citizens , are still the most expensive Swedish productions of all time. Although the theatrical distribution cut both Emigranten and Das neue Land considerably, they were intended to help the filmmaker achieve an international breakthrough. American critic Roger Ebert praised emigrants as "... a special film that is Swedish and yet somehow American - in the sense that it tells the story of what America means to so many millions" . The film service rated Das neue Land as “artistically more intensive and more lasting than the first part” and compared it to Elia Kazan's emigrant epic The Unconquerable (1963). Both films won two Golden Globes in 1973 in the categories of Best Actress in a Drama (Liv Ullmann) and Best Foreign Film , along with the Guldbagge and the Danish Bodil . At the Oscars in the same year (official census 1972) five nominations followed, but the films did not receive any awards. Jan Troell, the first Swedish filmmaker to be nominated for an Oscar for directing , was beaten by the American Bob Fosse ( Cabaret ), while Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie won Best Foreign Production of the Year .

After the great success of his two previous films, Troell directed the Swedish television film Gamen in 1973 . A year later, the American film studio Warner Bros. offered him the direction of the English-language western Zandy's Bride , which is about a rude rancher (played by Gene Hackman ) who has to recognize an equal companion in his wife (Liv Ullmann). The "psychologically sensitive (...) film about the partnership in marriage, full of inner tension, with images of tart and poetic charm" was popularized by European critics with Ingmar Bergman's Scenes of a Marriage (1973) or François Truffaut's The Secret of the False Bride (1969) compared. Still, Troell didn't feel comfortable in the US film scene. The cooperation with an international film team of 100 unsettled the Swedish filmmaker, who for contractual reasons could not take over the camera work as usual. After producing Zandy's Bride , he returned to his native Sweden, where the 1977 drama Bang! originated. The film about a freedom-loving amateur musician and teacher (played by Håkan Serner) was praised by Ingmar Bergman as a "poetic masterpiece" , but was controversial in Sweden at the time. 1979 Troell returned to Hollywood again to shoot the drama Hurricane with Mia Farrow and Dayton Ka'ne in the leading roles for the Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis . The US $ 20 million large-scale production, which should originally have been staged by Roman Polański , is a remake of John Fords ... then came the hurricane (1937) and was shot entirely on Bora Bora . Hurricane , rated "second rate" by critics , was Troell's last American film production. He returned to Sweden for good after filming was over.

Late work

In 1982, three years after the hurricane , Jan Troell set out to film the fateful polar expedition by Salomon August Andrée , Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel . The three Swedish polar explorers had tried in vain to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon in 1897 . The Flight of the Eagle , based on a novel by Per Olof Sundman and starring Max von Sydow, Göran Stangertz and Sverre Anker Ousdal in the roles of the dead polar explorers, won an Oscar in 1983 (official census 1982) in the category Best Foreign Language Film nominated. Then it became quiet about the Swedish director, who is considered the most important filmmaker in his home country alongside Ingmar Bergman. After the birth of his daughter Johanna in 1983, Troell devoted himself to a long-term film study in which he investigated the question of the world in which his child grew up. The interview with the American psychologist and philosopher Rollo May , documented with a film camera, was followed by conversations with the Swedish politicians Tage Erlander and Ingvar Carlsson as well as observations of everyday human fates over a period of two years. Märchenland , the title of the documentary, earned Troell an Honorable Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988 . “If only one of my films were to outlive me, I wish it was 'Fairytale Land'. This film is the most important of all to me. He is so close to me. ” Jan Troell later said about his work.

In 1991, nine years after The Flight of the Eagle , Troell returned to working on a feature film. Il Capitano tells the story of a young Finnish couple (played by Antti Reini and Maria Heiskanen) who, while trying to steal a bicycle, kill a Swedish boy and his parents and flee to Amsterdam . Jan Troell made a late comeback with the drama, which is based on a true story from 1988 and met with great opposition in Sweden. Il Capitano won the Guldbagge and the Norwegian film award Amanda for Best Film in 1992 , Troell was also awarded the Director's Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. Another award-winning film was Troell's biography Hamsun (1996), in which he entrusted Max von Sydow with the lead role of the controversial Norwegian writer and Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun . The drama, which had taken fifteen years to prepare, again met with approval from Swedish film critics, was awarded the Guldbagge for best production of the year and won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Montréal World Film Festival . The documentary Ballonfahrt in den Tod (1997), in which Troell again took up the fate of Salomon August Andrées and his companions, was followed by a film biography in 2001. As white as snow tells the life story of Elsa Andersson (1897–1922), Sweden's first female pilot , who died on her third parachute jump in front of thousands of spectators. The "epic (...) designed, opulently illustrated (...) portrait of a courageous woman" with Amanda Ooms in the lead role was awarded the Guldbagge for Best Film of the Year in 2002. Jan Troell received the directing award again 35 years after receiving the award for Here you have your life .

Jan Troell receives the Kulturhammaren Prize in Lund , Sweden, May 2009

In 2008, 76-year-old Troell returned to the big screen with The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson , that like Here you have your life (1966) and As white as snow (2001) is set in Malmö in the early 20th century . The drama is about a poor mother of seven who wins a camera in a lottery. Despite the financial difficulties, she keeps the apparatus that becomes a medium of emancipation for the positive-thinking woman. The film starred with Il Capitano actress Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt and Jesper Christensen and was inspired by the family history of Troell's wife, who also worked on the script; Maria Larsson was her father's aunt. The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September 2008 and was released in Swedish cinemas at the same time. With a budget of 43 million euros, it is Troell's largest film project since Emigranten (1971) and Das neue Land (1972). A few weeks after its release, the film was announced as a Swedish candidate for the Foreign Oscar , won the Guldbagge for best film of the year and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award in 2009.

Jan Troell, who always strives for authenticity in his films and whose imagery is characterized by "... great simplicity, constant comprehensibility, strong urgency" , is married to Agneta Ulfsäter-Troell, who is nine years younger. His daughter Johanna Troell (* 1983) emerged from his marriage to the writer, who changed her first name to Yohanna in 2001 .

In 2004, his wife and daughter took on roles in Troell's contribution The Yellow Tag , which was part of the episode film European Visions produced by Lars von Trier . In the joint effort, twenty-five European directors, including Fatih Akın , Tony Gatlif , Theo van Gogh and Aki Kaurismäki , took on five-minute film contributions that focus on the present or future life in Europe.

The Swedish filmmaker, who among other things supported an appeal for peace and freedom in an independent Palestine together with other filmmakers , was given a retrospective at the 2001 Nordic Film Days in Lübeck and at the Munich Film Museum . Troell lives in Smygehamn , in the Skåne municipality of Trelleborg .

Filmography (selection)

Director

camera operator

Screenwriter

Film editor

Awards

Oscar

  • 1973: nominated in the categories of Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Emigrants

Guldbagge

  • 1967: Best director for Here You Have Your Life
  • 1989: Creative Achievement Award
  • 1992: Best film and nominated in the Best Cinematography category for Il Capitano
  • 2002: Best Director and Best Cinematography , nominated in the Best Screenplay category for As white as in the snow
  • 2009: Best film and nominated in the categories Best Director , Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography for The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson

Further

Amanda

  • 1992: Best foreign film for Il Capitano

Berlin International Film Festival

  • 1967 : CICAE Prize , CIDALC Prize , Interfilm Prize , nominated for the Golden Bear in the Best Film category for Here you have your life
  • 1968 : Golden Bear , Interfilm Prize - Otto Dibelius Film Prize , OCIC Prize , UNICRIT Prize and Prize of the International Writers' Guild for Raus bist du
  • 1988 : Interfilm Prize - Honorable Mention for Das Märchenland
  • 1992 : Silver Bear for Best Director , nominated for the Golden Bear for Il Capitano

Bodil

  • 1973: Best European film for Das neue Land
  • 2009: nominated in the Best Non-American Film category for Maria Larsson's Eternal Moments

Cannes International Film Festival

  • 1977: Nominated for the Palme d'Or for the best film for Bang!

David di Donatello

  • 1976: Premio David Europeo for Zandy's bride

Jussi

  • 1972: Best Foreign Filmmaker for Emigrants and Das neue Land

Montréal World Film Festival

Nordic Film Festival in Rouen

  • 1997: Grand Jury Prize for Hamsun

Independent Spirit Awards

  • 2010: nominated in the category Best Foreign Film for The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson

Robert

  • 2009: Best non-American film for The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson

San Francisco International Film Festival

  • 1999: Certificate of Merit in the category Film & Video - History for En frusen dröm

Valladolid International Film Festival

  • 1996: nominated in the Best Film category for Hamsun
  • 1998: Best documentary for En frusen dröm
  • 2008: Best Cinematography (together with Mischa Gavrjusjov) and nominated for the Golden Ear for The Eternal Moments of Maria Larsson

Venice International Film Festival

  • 1982 nominated for the Golden Lion for The Eagle's Flight

Western Heritage Awards

  • 1974: Best theatrical feature film for Das neue Land

literature

  • Troell, Jan; Young, Vernon: Jan Troell: a portrait and an interview . Stockholm: The Swedish Film Institute, 1975 (Modern Swedish cinema 2). - ISBN 91-85248-04-5 (English edition)
  • Robards, Jason; Farrow, Mia; From Sydow, Max; Troell, Jan: Hurricane: [press kit] . New York: Paramount, 1979. (English edition)
  • Dunås, Jon: Apparaturbetraktelser: metafilmiska aspekter på jan troells "här har du ditt liv" . Dissertation: Stockholm University, 2001. - ISBN 91-7265-330-2 (Swedish edition)
  • Lange-Fuchs, Hauke: Jan Troell: Poet with the Camera: Documentation 43: Nordic Film Days Lübeck 2001 . Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2001. - ISBN 3-7950-1244-9
  • Nordic Council of Ministers: Summer nights and winter days . [Sl]: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1997. (English edition)
  • Despised, Jan: Ole Dole Doff = Een, twee, uit: hokus, pokus, away! : iene, miene, mutte: [Jan Troell ...] . Brussels: Cedoc film; The Hague: Katholiek Instituut voor Audiovisuele Vorming; Hilversum: Christelijke Filmactie, 1973. (Dutch edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. film service 29/1967
  2. ↑ cf. film service 02/1969
  3. ↑ cf. engl. Roger Ebert's film review on emigrants in the Chicago Sun-Times from January 15, 1973
  4. ↑ cf. film service 05/1977
  5. ↑ cf. film service 03/1978
  6. ↑ cf. Zandy's bride . In: The large TV feature film film lexicon (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006. - ISBN 978-3-89853-036-1
  7. ↑ cf. Bang! Movie Review on luebeck.de
  8. ↑ cf. Hurricane . In: The large TV feature film film lexicon (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006. - ISBN 978-3-89853-036-1
  9. ↑ cf. Film review by Vincent Canby in the New York Times , April 12, 1979
  10. ↑ cf. Film review of Das Märchenland on luebeck.de
  11. ↑ cf. Film review of As white as snow on luebeck.de
  12. ↑ cf. Behrens, Volker: A soft spot for people . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , July 18, 2007, edition 165/2007, p. 8
  13. ↑ cf. Huss, Pia: Troell-premiär på Bergmanveckan on dn.se, July 27, 2008 (accessed on August 3, 2008)
  14. ↑ cf. Mälarstedt, Kurt: Jan Troell jagar de eviga ögonblicken at dn.se, June 2, 2007 (accessed on August 4, 2008)
  15. ↑ cf. Nordic countries forward Oscar hopefuls . Associated Press Worldstream on Sep 19, 2008 at 2:15 PM GMT
  16. ↑ cf. Neue Zürcher Zeitung from October 14, 1972
personal data
SURNAME Troell, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish film director, cameraman, screenwriter and film editor
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Malmo-Limhamn