Alf Sjöberg

Biography

In 1925 the young actor Alf Sjöberg took part in the first stage play broadcast on Swedish radio, “Spelet om Envar” (“Everyman”). He was not yet a director.

His full name was Sven Erik Alf Sjöberg. He was born on 21 June 1903 in Stockholm, the son of Carl Erik Sjöberg, a caretaker, and Elisabeth Wickberg. After eight years at secondary school he studied from 1923 to 1925 at the acting school of the Dramaten, as the Swedes call the Royal Dramatic Theatre, and stayed on there as an actor. He also appeared in films, among them the silent “The Poetry of Ådalen” (1928).

In 1929 he was hired as a director at the radio company Radiotjänst, and in 1930 he moved to the Dramaten in the same post. He was twenty-six. He never left that stage in the fifty years that followed. By Ingmar Bergman’s count, he had 138 productions at the Dramaten, eighteen films, two television productions and 183 radio plays to his name; Bergman thought such a body of work was probably without parallel. Sjöberg also began as a stage designer: at first he made the set sketches himself, and from 1932 he worked with the artist Sven Erik Skawonius, who helped him shape the visual side of a production. In the 1940s he brought leading Swedish painters into his productions. His work was shown at an exhibition of Swedish theatre art in Lund in 1936 and at an exhibition at Charlottenborg, and it is held in the collections of the Scenkonstmuseet (the Swedish museum of performing arts) and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

He understood the theatre as a force in revolt against social injustice. In the 1930s he borrowed methods from Soviet Russian modernism and dreamed of a true people’s theatre. He helped introduce Lorca, Brecht and O’Neill to Sweden and also staged Stig Dagerman. Among Shakespeare’s plays he directed “Hamlet”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Merchant of Venice”; according to Bergman, he respected Sjöberg’s Shakespeare productions so much that he did not dare to stage Shakespeare at the Dramaten while Sjöberg was alive. His 1949 production of Strindberg’s “Miss Julie”, with Inga Tidblad and Ulf Palme, entered the history of Swedish theatre, and later versions of the play are still compared with it.

In film he made his debut in 1929 with “Den starkaste” (“The Strongest”), about seal hunters. Then came “The Heavenly Play” (1942), “Torment” (1944), “Iris and the Lieutenant” (1946), “Only a Mother” (1949), “Miss Julie” (1951), “Barabbas” (1953), “The Judge” (1960), “Ön” (1966) and “The Father” (1969). “Torment” was made from a script by Bergman, who worked on the shoot as assistant director; it tells of a schoolboy and the teacher who persecutes him. The film brought Sjöberg recognition abroad. In 1946 he shared the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival with other pictures (that year eleven films received the prize), and in 1951 he won it for “Miss Julie”, as did Vittorio De Sica for “Miracle in Milan”. The film “Ön” won him the Guldbagge Award, the Swedish film prize, for best director.

In 1955 he directed “Hamlet” for television, and the production is regarded as a landmark in the history of Swedish television drama. In the 1950s he belonged to the circle of artists close to Prime Minister Tage Erlander and was a member of the Radio Council. His honours include the Litteris et Artibus medal (1951), the gold medal of the Theatre Union (1964), the Golden Ship (1979) and an honorary doctorate in philosophy.

He died in Stockholm in April 1980: on his way to a rehearsal at the Dramaten he was hit by a bus while riding his bicycle. He is buried at Galärvarvskyrkogården.