"Flight of the Eagle"

Henric Holmberg (Swedenborg), Göran Stangertz (Strindberg), Sverre Anker Ousdal (Frænkel), Max von Sydow, seated (Andrée), in the film's recreation of one of the expedition's publicity photographs

One of the actual photographs, from 1896 --

"The Flight of the Eagle"

We include this snippet from Peter Cowie's "Salute to Max von Sydow at eighty" as an interesting glimpse behind the scenes during the filming of Jan Troell's magnificent and now undeservedly-obscure 1982 film "The Flight of the Eagle".

Max von Sydow as Andrée, Sverre Anker Ousdal (obscured) as Frænkel, and Göran Stangertz as Strindberg begin their ill-fated ascent.

"We [von Sydow and Cowie] really only became friends in the early 1980s, when Max played the Emperor Ming in Mike Hodges’s version of Flash Gordon and was stationed at Shepperton Studios for a stint. I went down to interview him for my book on Bergman, and then one year later, I was invited to visit the shoot of Jan Troell’s The Flight of the Eagle, in which Max played the intrepid, obsessive explorer S. A. Andrée.

"To reach the 'location' on The Flight of the Eagle, you endured a fifty-minute ride across rough ice on a snowmobile just south of the Arctic Circle, in the Gulf of Bothnia. Andrée and his two companions tried to reach the North Pole in a balloon in 1897, and it seemed Jan Troell was having as much difficulty launching the balloon that day as the explorers must have experienced more than eighty years earlier. It lurched upward, then lost height, and suddenly Max was trapped between the ice floe and the gondola basket. The crew managed to free him, but almost immediately the ice started breaking up. A helicopter was summoned, and I was flown back to shore with Max and two of the actors. While awaiting the return of Troell and his crew, Max led the way to a nearby farm. As darkness fell, the farmer’s wife served coffee and smorgasbord to us all, not recognizing Max. Then the others arrived, and we all drove back to the small town of Kalix in a Volkswagen minibus laid on by the production company. Max nodded off in the front seat. Once at the hotel, makeup had to be removed, and a late supper devoured. Long after midnight, the producer moved among the tables, circulating the next day’s call sheet. '9:00 a.m.,' said Max gravely, and with his consummate professionalism, 'Yes, that sounds acceptable.'"

Read the rest of the tribute to von Sydow at criterion.com.

"Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd"

Ten minutes or so from the Swedish-language version of "The Flight of the Eagle".

"Neshornet"

"Neshornet"
by Eugène Ionesco, translated from "Rhinocéros"
1982
NRK

Directed by Stein Winge

Cast includes:

Per Theodor Haugen
Sverre Anker Ousdal

Hør et uddrag [link broken?]

"Macbeth"

"Macbeth"
by William Shakespeare; translated by Inger Hagerup
Premiere 25 September 1982
Nationaltheatret Amfiscenen
Genre: Tragedy

Directed by Jaques Rosner

Cast includes:

Sverre Anker Ousdal as Macbeth
Kari Simonsen as Lady Macbeth
...
Bjørn Floberg as Banquo
Jan Hårstad as Macduff

II.i.49-56.
MACBETH. Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecat's off'rings; and wither'd Murther,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.

"Kvinnen og den svarte fuglen"

"Kvinnen og den svarte fuglen"
TV movie
1982
Genre: Drama/WWII
Language: Norwegian
Running time:

Directed by Eli Ryg

Cast includes:

Anne Marie Ottersen as Bett
Marie Louise Tank as Gabi
Minken Fosheim as Gry
...
Sverre Anker Ousdal as Just

"Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd"

"Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd"
1982
International title: "Flight of the Eagle"
Genre: Historical/Drama
Running time: 135 minutes
Language: Swedish

Directed by Jan Troell

Cast includes:

Max von Sydow as S.A. Andrée
Sverre Anker Ousdal as Knut Frænkel
Göran Stangertz as Nils Strindberg

Synopsis: "Based on the novel by Per Olaf Sundman, Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd (Flight of the Eagle) tells the real-life story of a Swedish engineer's attempted expedition to the North Pole in a hot air balloon. Jan Troell directs this over two-hour adventure drama set in 1897. Max Von Sydow stars as Salomon August Andrée, the engineer who leads the tragic journey in a balloon called The Ornen (The Eagle). He is accompanied by explorers Nils Strindberg (Goran Stangertz) and Knut Fraenkel (Sverre Anker Ousdal). Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the 1983 Academy Awards. Using his experiences making this film, Troell went on to make the hour-long documentary En Frusen Drom (Their Frozen Dream) in 1998 with archival information from the remains of the expedition found in 1930 on an island near the North Pole. (Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide)"


From 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael: "The Flight of the Eagle (1982) Jan Troell's account of the 1897 North Pole expedition by balloon undertaken by the Swedish engineer S.A. Andrée and two colleagues -- all of them pitifully inexperienced aeronauts. When the balloon falls, the movie takes off, and it has the emotionally devastating effect of a major novel. (There's a heft to Troell's sensibility.) This is an epic about the suppressed hysteria and the male obsession with proving oneself by great, daring achievements which we associate with Victorianism. Troell's moviemaking here is a one-of-a-kind mixture of stolidity and lyricism, with a touch of the uncanny. He is both the cinematographer and the director, as he was on his two-part epic The Emigrants and The New Land, and also, once again, the film editor and one of the collaborators on the script. (It's based on the 1967 book by Per Olof Sundman.) With Max von Sydow as Andrée; Göran Stangertz as Nils; huge, burly Sverre Anker Ousdal as Knut; and Clément Harari as Lachambre, the balloon manufacturer. In Swedish. Color."