Barabbas

Stage actor and director who made an impressive silent film debut in 1929 with “The Strongest”, a wrenching, documentary-like portrayal of seal hunters. Sjoberg became disillusioned with the film medium after the advent of sound and returned to working in the theatre until the 1940s, when he helped revive the Swedish cinema with such fine films as the pacifist “They Staked Their Lives” (1940), the haunting allegorical fantasy “The Road to Heaven” (1942) and the powerful Ingmar Bergman-scripted “Torment” (1944), starring Alf Kjellin and future director Mai Zetterling. Sjoberg reteamed the romantic leads from the latter film for the poignant love story, “Iris and the Lieutenant” (1946).

Over the course of forty years Sjoberg made almost twenty films; busiest from 1940 to 1956 he became one of the finest and most important directors in the history of Scandinavian film. Sjoberg’s greatest film is generally held to be his striking version of August Strindberg’s play, “Miss Julie” (1951), which shared the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival with Vittorio De Sica’s “Miracle in Milan”. The film’s intermingling of past and present and its manipulation of space showed just how far-ranging the influence of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941) was; on its own, “Miss Julie” clearly influenced not only Bergman (especially in his “Wild Strawberries” 1957) but also the larger European art cinema of the 1950s and 60s. Sjoberg later another fine film from another Bergman screenplay, “The Last Couple Out” (1956) and his last film was another Strindberg adaptation, “The Father” (1969). —allmovie guide