Henning Carlsen

Director. Born 4 June 1927, died 30 May 2014, aged 86.

Henning Carlsen grew up in Aalborg, in a conservative middle-class home, and became connected to the Resistance in 1943. After some tumultuous school years that ended short of a high-school diploma, he was gripped by cinema, apprenticing at Minerva Film. He stayed there from 1948-53, working in documentaries and instructional films, with Theodor Christensen as his master.

From 1954-57 he was at Nordisk Film Junior (interrupted by a six-month study trip to Paris in 1955). He had a small breakthrough with "The Bicyclist" (1957), the fanciful tale of a bicycle that has a mind of its own. In 1961 he attracted attention with his documentaries "Limfjorden" (Da. title) and, especially, "Old People." The latter was the first film in an interview-based, cinéma verité-inspired trilogy about Danish living habits and attitudes and was followed by "Family Pictures" (1964) and "Youth" (1965).

Carlsen made his debut as a feature-film director in 1962 with the South Africa "A World of Strangers" (1962), freely adapting the Nadine Gordimer novel from 1958. Exposing the apartheid of its day, the film was illegally shot, whenever possible with a hidden camera. After going to Sweden to direct "The Cats" (1965), a compressed drama about women, Carlsen had his international breakthrough in 1966 with his intense adaptation of the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun's classic novel "Hunger" (1966). This Danish-Swedish-Norwegian co-production attracted a lot of attention at the Cannes Festival, while Per Oscarsson in the lead won the award for best male actor.

Ever since, "Hunger" has cemented its reputation as a central work in Danish film history. The American writer Paul Auster, for one, has called it the best literary adaptation he ever saw.

Following another two adaptations of novels, Carlsen switched gears with "Oh, to Be on the Bandwagon!" (1971), an everyday drama about some very Danish daydreamers that was a hit with audiences and critics. The French-Danish co-production "A Happy Divorce" (1975), a Chabrol-inspired psychological drama with a French cast, screened at Cannes, while "Did Somebody Laugh?" (1978), about a young unemployed man in the 1930s, saw Carlsen returning to a more familiar Danish setting.

Carlsen's most striking later works are "The Wolf at the Door" (1986), a lavish Danish-French film starring Donald Sutherland as the painter Paul Gauguin; the critically acclaimed "Two Green Feathers" (1995), another Knut Hamsun adaptation; and "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" (2012), a controversial adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's that was shot in Mexico.