Cultpix Radio Ep.61 - Arne Mattsson, Sweden's Most Prolific Director

Cultpix Radio

The Swedish film director Arne Mattsson was active in the film industry across eight decades (if you count him carrying beer to the film crew at a shoot when he was 6 years old).

He made his last film in 1990 and passed away in 1995. In 2019 Mattsson would have been 100 years old. But this was not celebrated at all in the gigantic way Ingmar Bergman’s 100th was celebrated the year before. Shame!

In the 50’s, however, Mattsson was truly fetted, with multiple awards at film festivals, and actually bigger than Bergman. Most famously for "One Summer of Happiness" (1951), which won the Gold Bear at the second ever Berlin Film Festival. But his career went downhill, and there’s a rumour that his never-published autobiography had the working title “I skuggan av en skitstövel” (“In the Shadow of a Bastard”) – referring to I.B.

Arne Mattsson was probably Sweden’s most prolific film director ever, with his 60 films (Bergman 'only' made 40). He was an extremely versatile film maker, in genres like drama, action, thriller, comedy, musical, children’s film, horror, juvenile delinquent, sexploitation…

With the second theme week of Mattsson’s films for the production company Nordisk Tonefilm, Cultpix now has 24 of his 60 films.

To discuss this amazing roller coaster career on Cultpix Radio, we have invited Jan Lumholdt – journalist, film historian, and author of the anthology "Lars von Trier: Interviews" and "Harriet Andersson – Conversations with Jan Lumholdt".

Here is Jan Lumholdt's article on Arne Mattsson, written for his centenary:
https://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/arne-mattsson-100-ar-for-tapperhet-i-film/
It's in Swedish, but can easily be translated online.
There is an intro discussion about upcoming films (Japanese!) and the outro is the music from Mattsson's film "The Killer" (1967).