Eva Dahlbeck was one of Swedish cinema’s most popular actresses in the 1940s and 1950s and starred in several of Ingmar Bergman’s early films, including Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). A period piece, with elements of romance, drama and comedy, it was Bergman’s first big international film success.
Dahlbeck came to be overshadowed by Liv Ullmann and other Bergman regulars but she appeared in six films he directed and another two he wrote. Their collaboration ran from the drama Eva (1948), written by Bergman and directed by Gustaf Molander, to Now About These Women (1964), a comedy that left many unimpressed.
Born in 1920 in Saltsj?-Duvn?s, near Stockholm, she attended the Royal Dramatic Theatre School and began acting in films and plays in the early 1940s. She appeared in both the stage and film versions of Rid I Natt! (Ride Tonight), a historical drama. By the end of the decade she was a star in her own country, both in theatre and film. A shapely blonde, she fitted the international image of Swedish womanhood and appeared in several episodes of Foreign Intrigue (1953-55), a US TV series revolving around foreign correspondents in Europe.
In 1958 she shared the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival with Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson and Barbro Hiort af Orn?s for So Close to Life (1958), a bleak Bergman drama. Her other Bergman films include Waiting Women (1952), A Lesson in Love (1954) and Journey into Autumn (1955). She was unusually playful for a Bergman actress and was enigmatically described by the director as a “battleship of femininity”.
In several films she co-starred with Gunnar Bj?rnstrand, and their playful teamwork has been compared to that of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. In Waiting Women their scenes are played out largely in a lift stuck between floors, during which time they achieve new insight into their marital difficulties.
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She was William Holden’s wife in the espionage thriller The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), but retired from acting in the 1970s to concentrate on writing. She wrote poetry, plays and novels, admitting she used Bergman as the basis for one protagonist. She wrote: “I believe that David \ has an erotic relationship with everything around him — with nature, people, things, indeed with everything that happens. It may appear as if he is involved in some universal act of love that is sometimes fruitful and sometimes destructive.” She also said she saw Bergman as a jester, observing and reflecting reality “to the point of confusion”.
Her husband, Sven Lampell, an air force officer, died last year, and they had two sons.
Eva Dahlbeck, actress, was born on March 8, 1920. She died on February 8, 2008, aged 87