Swedish Series Offers Unfamiliar but Beguiling Films on Children

“The Child in Swedish Cinema” sounds like a film school thesis, but it’s actually a series being presented next weekend at USC’s Norris Cinema Theater as part of the New Sweden ’88 celebration, marking the 350th anniversary of the establishment of New Sweden Colony in North America. At least two of the four unfamiliar films in the series prove utterly beguiling. The final offering, on Sunday at 7 p.m., is Ingmar Bergman’s glowing 1982 farewell to the cinema, “Fanny and Alexander.”

“I Am Maria” (1979), which screens Friday after the 7 p.m. presentation of “Hugo and Josefin” (1967), and “Ake and His World” (1984), which screens Saturday following the 7 p.m. showing of “The Elephant Walk” (1979), are proof that “My Life as a Dog” is not unique in the Swedish cinema, which in its European sophistication, is able to take children as seriously as it does adults. Neither Karsten Wedel’s “I Am Maria” nor Allan Edwall’s “Ake and His World” has as light a tone as “My Life as a Dog,” but they’re nevertheless charmers both in their warm, intimate realistic style.

In “I Am Maria,” Lise-Lotte Hjelm plays a Stockholm girl of about 13 coping with being shunted off to small-town relatives by her mother, a single parent constantly changing jobs and eager to land a man. Maria adjusts pretty well even though her mother’s cousin’s prim, well-meaning wife is an inherent kill-joy.

She’s not really happy, however, until she befriends the local character (Peter Lindgren), a shabby man of late middle age who has become a recluse in the wake of the tragic loss of his wife and two children in a train accident. What no one knows is that in his messy solitude this man has developed into a gifted painter in the naive style. Wedel treats the friendship between these two lonely people of widely differing ages with restraint and poignancy instead of the usual sentimentality. With it humor, nuances and sharp observations, “I Am Maria” becomes a richly textured and thoroughly enjoyable film.

Virtually the same can be said for “Ake and His World,” which is also set in a small town but sometime in the ‘20s. We see the world through the eyes of towheaded, freckled Ake (Martin Lindstrom), a boy of about 7 whose father is the kindly local doctor. His parents are devoted, young and attractive, and his older sister doesn’t give him too hard a time.

Yet, as idyllic as Martin’s home life is, the boy does not live in a sheltered world. He learns how to cope with guilt and with death--which he and his friends describe as when “You get white and cold. Then they have a party, except you can’t come.” Indeed, there seems an inordinate number of sad cases confronting Ake for such a small community. (You’d think it was Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio.”) But both this film, which was based on a novel by Bertil Malmberg, and “I Am Maria” suggest that children can be more aware of the alienated and the desperate than their elders. In any case, these are both wonderfully rewarding films that should have received American distribution. Admission is free. Information: (213) 743-6071.