ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how sports in Swedish film have evolved between the early 1900s and the early 2000s. During the silent period, boxing was the most prevalent sport featured in Swedish cinema. Football (soccer) was not depicted at all. This changed dramatically with the arrival of the ‘talkies’. During the 1930s and 1940s, popular sports such as football, motorcycle racing and boat racing began to appear in Swedish film. The movies in question had a strong national focus. Many films from the late 1940s and the 1950s exploit and express a national pride in the success of Swedish football players in Italy and in the heavyweight boxing champion Ingemar Johansson. During the radicalized 1960s, sport virtually disappeared from Swedish film. With the advent of the twenty-first century, a significant change is evident in the depiction of sport in Swedish film. They differ to a large extent from the films of the twentieth century by highlighting both girls and women to a significant degree, as well as multicultural environments.
