Lena Nyman, actress, was born on May 23, 1944. She died on February 4, 2011, aged 66 Lena Nyman helped push back the frontiers of film censorship, and incidentally helped to establish Sweden’s reputation at the forefront of the new “permissivie society”, when she starred in I am Curious — Yellow (1967), a low-budget mixture of documentary and sex that became one of the highest grossing foreign-language films of its time.
Nyman played a young woman who conducts a series of street interviews on such unpromising topics as the conservatism of the Swedish trade union movement. But in between interviews she begins an affair and has sex in increasingly unlikely settings, including a tree, a pond and in front of the royal palace.
It was ostensibly a serious comment on Swedish society. Its subtitle and that of the sequel I am Curious — Blue (1968) reflected the Swedish national colours. But it was the sexual elements that attracted the interest of international audiences and officials, though the scenes are clearly simulated and would be considered relatively tame nowadays.
In Britain it was cut by 11 minutes — about a tenth of the total running time, while in the United States it was branded obscene and never made it through Customs. A federal court eventually ruled that the film was protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression, and it set a record for takings for a foreign-language film.
Its success prompted a flood of imitations that mixed graphic sex scenes with a quasi-documentary approach, but it also prompted mainstream American film-makers to address sexual issues and depict sex on screen with a new explicitness.
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Born in Stockholm in 1944, Nyman attended drama school and began acting as a child. I am Curious — Yellow was her second film with the director Vilgot Sjoman. She had previously starred in his film 491 (1964), which also contained controversial sex scenes.
The controversy over I am Curious — Yellow did nothing to harm Nyman’s career and she went on to appear in more than 50 films, including a co-starring role as the mentally and physically handicapped daughter of Ingrid Bergman and sister of Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (1978).
Lena Nyman, actress, was born on May 23, 1944. She died on February 4, 2011, aged 66