Smultronstället

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens when 78-year-old Isak Borg, played by Victor Sjöström, is in bed at home. He dreams about being on a city street with no other people present. A clock hanging above the street has no hands. Isak checks his pocket watch; it too has no hands. A figure appears with its back turned. Isak walks up to the figure and touches it. It has no face. The figure collapses onto the pavement. Blood streams out of the figure. Next a hearse drawn by a team of horses turns a corner and enters the street on which the dream-Isak is standing. It approaches Isak and then passes him but its rear wheel gets caught on a lamppost. Although no one is driving the hearse, the horses continue forward. The left rear wheel breaks off at the lamppost. The horses and hearse drive away but the coffin comes loose, and slides out and onto the street. A hand appears on the outside of the coffin. Isak looks at the hand. His hand and the hand outstretched from the coffin touch, with the hand coming out of the coffin holding Isak. The body in the coffin is also Isak. He awakes.The viewer senses the loneliness in Isak. And that Isak's time is running out. These are themes that come up again and again through the day.He leaves his bedroom to waken his maid Agda, played by Jullan Kindahl. Isak asks her to pack his suitcase and prepare breakfast for him. He has decided to drive to Lund, where he will later today receive an honorary doctorate as an award for his contributions to medicine. They squabble because they had previously planned to fly from Stockholm to Lund. While eating breakfast, Marianne, Isak's daughter-in-law, enters the breakfast room. She is played by Ingrid Thulin. Marianne has been staying at Isak's house, and asks if she can accompany Isak on the 300-mile drive from Stockholm to Lund. He agrees.They depart. Marianne tries to smoke but Isak objects. There is some tension in the car almost from the beginning of the trip. They manage to converse. Isak mentions that his son, Evald, owes his father money, and on principle is going to pay it back, a principle both father and son endorse. Marianne talks about her relationship with Evald, who, like his father, is a physician. A good deal is revealed, especially in a flashback that summarizes the conversation in the car. Her marriage to Evald (Gunnar Björnstrand) is tense and unhappy. Evald is as rigid as Isak but Evald dislikes his father. Evald and Marianne quarreled sharply when she revealed to him that she was pregnant. He objected, and said he did not want children. Isak's marriage was also an unhappy one. At this particular juncture, the viewer develops a sense of the film's power of truth-telling.Isak decides to make a detour, and drives to the house where, during his youth, he spent many summers. One could find in the summer house his mother and father and 10 brothers and sisters as well as visiting cousins, uncles, and aunts. Marianne goes off to swim in the lake, leaving Isak alone. He walks up to a patch of wild strawberries (the Swedish title of the film better translates to "wild strawberry patch"). Isak begins remembering his youthful days at the house and the land nearby. Flashbacks with Isak still in the scene show some of what life was like there long ago. His cousin Sara is picking wild strawberries to give to her deaf uncle as a birthday present when Sigfrid (Per Sjöstrand), Isak's brother, arrives. Sigfrid helps her pick strawberries and flirts with her. They kiss. She is at first willing but then breaks away. She is too committed to the young Isak to continue the dalliance. Isak at that moment is away with his father fishing in the lake.At the lunch table, Isak's twin sisters, who are loud and naive, report on the interlude between Sara and Sigfrid, embarrassing Sara. One of the twins is played by director Ingmar Bergman's daughter. The older Isak looks in on the scene. Sara, upset, leaves the table, and is consoled by her aunt, with Isak looking on. Sara describes how she thinks Isak is too good for her. He is too upright. Sigfrid is more playful.The viewer learns that Isak was in love with Sara but ultimately she married his brother Sigfrid. Isak is the last of the 10 Borg children alive. Sara, Sigfrid's widow, is still alive and in her 70s.Near the house, a teenage girl and two boys come into the scene. One is her boyfriend and the other is a kind of chaperone. They are hitchhiking. Their ultimate destination is Italy. The girl, whose name is also Sara, is played by Bibi Andersson (Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin have long been part of Bergman's company of players). Andersson also plays the Sara who was Isak's long-ago love. Of course, the present-Sara reminds Isak of his long-ago, and lost, Sara. The boys, Anders (Folke Sundquist) and Viktor (Björn Bjelfvenstam), argue about the existence of God and other matters, and Sara tries to keep their arguments civil. Although one boy is closer to Sara than the other, the viewer gets the sense that both are interested in her, much the way Sigfrid and Isak were interested in the Sara of long ago but only one will succeed with her.Back on the road, a Volkswagon beetle comes hurtling around a bend, and nearly crashes into Isak's big old Packard. Isak's black car is reminiscent of a hearse. The VW turns over but the passengers are unhurt, physically that is. The man (Gunnar Sjöberg) and woman (Gunnel Broström) in the car are a married couple almost out of Strindberg. The accident, the husband admits, was the result of driving while quarreling.Isak agrees to put the two in the car, and drive on toward Lund. The husband and wife are settled into jumper seats but continue to bicker. The husband needles the wife incessantly. She smacks him several times. Marianne, who is driving, stops the car, and orders the two to exit the car for the sake of the young people riding in the back.The car, now reduced to five travelers, stops at a service station that is run by a husband (Max von Sydow) and wife (Ann-Marie Wiman). Here we learn about another side of Isak. The couple is very happy to see Isak. Apparently long ago he worked some wonderful medicine to help the family. They admire him greatly, and absolutely refuse to let him pay for the gas or any of the work they did on the car. She is pregnant, and plans to name her child, if it is a son, Isak, after the doctor. Isak asks them to notify him when the child is born. He would like to be the child's godfather.They soon stop at a restaurant. The group has a delightful lunch at an outdoor terrace overlooking the beautiful Lake Vättern. Isak enjoys the company of the young people. The young people learn about Isak's award.There is another stop on the journey. At Isak's request, Marianne drives to the house of his ancient mother. Her house is en route. Marianne accompanies Isak into the house, and the young people remain in the car. Isak's mother is in her mid-90s and complains that she is always cold and that none of her grandchildren visit her. Mrs. Borg shows them some old artifacts from an earlier era, old toys and a pocket watch with no hands, the same pocket watch that appeared in Isak's dream at the beginning of the film. Later in the car, Marianne tells Isak how she is impressed by the mother's coldness. Marianne senses how that coldness runs through the family down to Evald.Isak falls asleep in the car while Marianne drives. He dreams that he is being given an examination by a professor of medicine. The professor is none other than the man Marianne asked to leave the car earlier that day. The cadaver he is to check is the man's wife but she isn't dead. Isak fails the examination. Perhaps it was not a medical school examination at all but an examination of how a lonely and aloof man lived his life. He awakes.The car has stopped. The young people have gone into a forest glen to gather flowers to make a bouquet for Isak. He is flattered by their attention.They reach Lund. Evald is in his home to greet them. Agda is there too although she was so angry in the morning that there was a chance she would not come. The three young people come. Isak, Marianne, and Evald dress for the ceremony which is an hour away. The young people plant themselves along the route of the processional to cheer Isak. The ceremony expresses great dignity and achievement, with many words uttered in Latin.Afterwards Isak is in Evald and Marianne's house although the viewer has the feeling that it is not going to be Marianne's house much longer. Isak tries to induce Agda to call him by his first name; after all they have known each other for 40 years. She declines.Isak is in bed in a second-floor bedroom. The young people serenade Isak from the garden below. He wishes them well as they got a lift to Hamburg and are closer yet to their goal of reaching Italy.Evald comes in. Isak wants Evald to forget about the debt. Isak also wants Evald and Marianne to reconcile. Marianne enters the room, and she and Isak have an affectionate exchange. The she heads off to party with Evald. The viewer gets a sense that Isak has to some extent broken through his loneliness and reconciled with the important people in his life.

Tags: psychedelic, comedy, flashback

Review:
Where the surrealist touches, moody photography, and incredibly smooth direction had made the big hit with me as a near boy, as an aging man I found myself--I hesitate to say painfully, but...well, closely--identifying with old Isak Borg in his strange pilgrimage, both interior and exterior, the day he receives his honorary degree at the cathedral in Lund.In the last twenty minutes or so of the movie, I found tears running down my face, not from any thrilling sentimental browbeating (I doubt if Mr. Bergman shot five seconds' worth of sentimentality in his whole long career!) but simply from the cumulative emotional impact of this simple, powerful story and its probing revelation of human character, desire, and chagrin.
In this symbolic tale of an old man's journey from emotional isolation to a kind of personal renaissance, Ingmar Bergman explores in part his own past, and in doing so rewards us all with a tale of redemption and love.Victor Sjostrom, then 80 years old, stars as Professor Isak Borg whose self-indulgent cynicism has left him isolated from others.
Bergman wrote that the idea for the film came upon him when he asked the question, "What if I could suddenly walk into my childhood?" He then imagined a film "about suddenly opening a door, emerging in reality, then turning a corner and entering another period of one's existence, and all the time the past is going on, alive."Bibi Andersson plays both the Sara from Borg's childhood, the cousin he was to marry, and the hitchhiker Sara who with her two companions befriends him with warmth and affection.
It is as though his life has returned to him as a theater in which the characters resemble those of his past; yet we are not clear in realizing whether the resemblance properly belongs in the old man's mind or is a synchronicity of time returned.Memorable is Ingrid Thulin who plays Mariana, the wife of Borg's son who accompanies him on the auto trip to Lund.
Such a gentle comeuppance meshes well with, and serves as a foil for, all that has gone on before on this magical day in an old man's life.See this for Bergman who was just then realizing his genius (The Seventh Seal was produced immediately before this film) and for Sjostrom who had the rare opportunity to return to film as an actor in a leading role many decades past him prime, and made the most of it with a flawless performance, his last major performance as he was to die three years later.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!).
This picture is amazing in its emotional impact and in my opinion is one of Bergman's most optimistic, profound, and warm films."Wild Strawberries" provides sincere, intelligent, and emotional contemplations of life's disappointment, regrets, and losses.
The main character, seventy-eight-year-old Professor Isak Borg is forced to see his life in a true and painful light, but he also would learn that there is hope.Sparkling cinematography by Gunnar Fisher and superb acting of Bergman's regulars  Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Anderson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max von Sydow and especially, the great silent film director, Victor Sjostrom as Professor Borg add to many delights of "Wild Strawberries" which also include Bergman's writing/directing with his famous mixing of conscious and unconscious, dreams and reality, the past and the present in the same scene..
Bergman's autobiographical story also benefits from the brilliant casting of Swedish film legend Victor Sjostrom as Isak Borg, whose towering performance is essential to the success of Wild Strawberries.
For once, he seems to come close to finding some peace with the unknowns of life that obviously preoccupied him as an artist, and the movie he gives us is sad but immensely warm; resigned but calm and reflective.An unequivocal masterpiece, and only one of a handful of Bergman films ("Persona" and "Cries and Whispers" being two others) that don't drive me over the edge when I watch them now.Grade: A+.
In Ingmar Berman's film masterpiece Smultronstallet (or Wild Strawberries' B&W, 1957), the protagonist, an elderly professor who is facing death, has to come to face to face with a long life that has failed to answer the important questions.
He is old now and faced with his own inadequacy and impotence.Bergman introduces three young people into the drama to introduce life's most important question  that of the existence of God. The old man gives them a ride.
It's a silence that reveals an amazing dimension of loss  the loss of year upon year of not coming to terms with this all-important question.In one of the final scenes, Bergman masterfully closes in tight on the aged face of Professor Isak Borg (played by Victor Sjostrom).
Bergman uses the usual pattern for him - a man is on a journey (life) and meets people who are going along the same road (friends and family), and they all head toward the end of their trip (death).
(Slight Spoilers) A man's life journey is all seen through a number of dreams and hallucinations on his trip, some 400 miles, to the town of Lund where he's to receive a lifetime achievement award for his 50 or so years of service to his fellow man as a doctor and a professor of medicine at his alma mater the Cathedral of Lund.Disturbed by a dream he had the night before Isak Borg decides to take a ride by car, not plane, to Lund for a ceremony thats to be in his honor for his work as a man of medicine.
Isak,in both his dreams and memories, is seen as a man who is unable to show any real feelings for those around and close to him in the fear of either being rejected as well as showing himself to be hurt by their negative responses.This defect in Isak personality has cost him the love of his life Sara when he was a young man who rejected him for his handsome and openly aggressive older brother Sigfried.
With the little time that he has left, Isak was to pass away three years later at the age of 81, Isak is determined to make up for it.Sweet touching yet simple little film about one man's journey back in time who sees how he missed out on the many wonderful things that life had to offer him by being blind to them.
The sound for instance -- I have seen the dream sequence at the beginning of the film when the Professor walks through empty streets, sees handless clocks, a carriage carrying a casket with his body -- a scene with almost complete silence,BUT prints on 16mm, VHS and even Laser Disc all contain a great deal of surface noise.
This is, admittedly, an uneven film, verbally over explicit, but it is packed with vivid imagery - an early dream sequence, both mysterious and yet significant; a disenchanted couple squabbling fiercely in a car; the sad beauty of Marianne, unhappy daughter-in-law; the words, memories and gestures of professor's mother; the distancing effect produced by the device of having the professor visiting his own past unseen by those who shared it with him; the meeting with Akerman.
It shows their lives to be rather drab for the most part, yet it also brings out how important the events in their lives are to the characters themselves.The story of old Professor Borg driving across Sweden to attend a ceremony in his honor is complemented by just the right measure of dream sequences and flashbacks to his youth, which put the doctor's life into perspective and raise the questions that Bergman wants his viewers to think about.
Bergman himself says that he got the idea for this film when he walked in his grandmothers house and suddenly he saw a lot of memories from his own childhood.Just as Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane" Victor Sjöström gives an magnificent performance.The superb use of flashbacks and Gunnar Fisher´s cinematography is some of the best I have seen.The film has many masterful dream sequence and I think that it´s one of the best films ever made.5/5.
Other important members of Bergman’s stock company of actors appear in bit-parts: even Gunnar Bjornstrand in the pivotal role of Sjostrom’s son and Thulin’s husband is only in a couple of scenes; a blonde Gunnel Lindblom plays Andersson’s sister (during Sjostrom’s recollections); and, most incongruously, Max von Sydow turns up as a gas-station owner grateful to doctor Sjostrom for services rendered in the past!WILD STRAWBERRIES also features two of cinema’s most unforgettable dream sequences – Sjostrom’s character meeting his own corpse while walking a deserted city street and, later, his humiliating exam for a doctor’s degree (by and in front of the people he met during the day’s journey on the way to picking up an award for his distinguished career).
The film presents a simple but eventful, episodic narrative that is brimming with reflections and insights about family, love and duty; invariably, these have marked the personality of the protagonist (rendered somewhat cold by regrets and disappointments) and now lead to either reconciliation or resignation on his part with his earlier life – it’s as if Bergman was doing his own version of “A Christmas Carol”!As usual, spirituality (the eternal debate on the existence of God) is touched upon here via semi-humorous incidents – a bickering middle-aged couple and two young students (both in love with the second character played by Andersson) who determine to settle the argument with a fistfight!
It's about an inner journey about one man's subjective state of mind as he sees nostalgic memories of childhood & lost love (regret), surreal visions of denial (mortality) and unsettling weird dreams which hint at a self-awareness and truth that he cannot face in reality.I was touched by Victor Sjostrom's performance as the elderly Prof.
It's also not without comedy, particularly the old Prof's relationship with his housekeeper Agfa and the absurd boxing match about 'God'(Bergman parodying himself) between the two young hitchhikers.What makes the film so intriguing is how characters/situations often reflect one another (Borg & his son, their coldness and attitude to life); these parallels extend to the point where characters even play dual roles: Bibi Andersson as Sara (the lost love & then the young vivacious traveller) and a cruel husband who later appears as the stern examiner in an unsettling dream.
What a magnificent performance.The direction of Ingmar Bergman, the crystal clear black and white photography of Gunnar Fischer and the music by Erik Nordgren meld together into a seamless work of art that stays with you long after the final frame.If you have never seen WILD STRAWBERRIES, now is the perfect time as it has been released on a beautiful DVD by Criterion.
Little does he know that she holds a great contempt for her father-in-law and is only accompanying him as a way of easily confronting him and expressing her true feelings.Painfully wounded by the prospect of his own daughter-in-law hating him, Borg begins to reflect upon his life in a series of visions, flashbacks and hazy dream sequences.This is my favorite Ingmar Bergman film.
Borg realizes as a frail old man that he has ruined his own life and has no happy memories.It is Bergman's "Citizen Kane" or "Ikiru" -- a poignant reflection on humanity and a film that, ultimately, can change the way you look at life -- if you open up enough to let it..
¨ Wild strawberries¨ is a spellbinding masterpiece by the great Ingmar Bergman with brilliant acting by Victor Sjostrom (Sweden first movie filmmaker and star , best known for his silent work , who died three years later , aged 81) and awesome cinematography by Gunnar Fischer ; showing a rich tapestry of fears , dreams , anxieties , memories and occasionally over-symbolic frames .
This Bergman's landmark film is developed in Sweden , after living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence , taking place a sentimental voyage .
During the journey this old man that's kind and cold, generous and unable to express any feelings, he'll get into some dreaming that will make him face some ghosts of the past.Reflections about life and death, about the youth and its holy innocence.As you may know Bergman's movies are not for any kind of audiences, if you0're gonna watch "Wild strawberries" you have to know what you're getting in to.
As the loneliness generated the coldness in his life, the one radiant light was his quiet and close-guarded memory of the love he had for Sara, and in the final scene we watch the old man view paradise as he looks back on the time when Sara was still with him, with his family at a country get-together.
As he travels to Lund with his disarmingly candid daughter-in-law, Marianne, to accept an honorary degree, he will encounter both people and places that will elicit memories, both the good and the bad, of his past, as we watch his feelings of melancholy gradually morph into the affirmation of life of which he was always searching for.So much of "Wild Strawberries" is, at its core, extraordinarily nuanced, with each new experience revealing another layer of our grouchy protagonist.
I like to believe that, like 'Rosebud' in Citizen Kane, the wild strawberries serve as an emblem of the innocence in our youth, a memory that evokes hope and sheer joy, parts of life that many people will, as they grow older, seek to regain in some form or another.This film had me in a complete lost for words.
(well those are the only two Bergman films I have seen but Wild Strawberries in my opinion is better than the seventh seal.) The movie is very artistic and the dialog is very good.
Victor Sjostrom stars in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries, from 1957.As most everyone knows, Victor Sjostrom was the Swedish and Hollywood director Victor Seastrom who ultimately quit directing and acted full-time in theater and film.
It's a psychological drama about a Swedish physician (Dr. Isak Borg), later a professor, coming to terms with his life in his elder years: his mistakes, weaknesses, his successes, his strengths.Knowing Bergman's life in the family in which he grew up helps one better understand both this film as well as his others.
In "Wild Strawberries", Ingmar Bergman reminds us a film can be positive and uplifting yet not seem the least bit hokey, and that's what I'm most thankful for when it comes to this film."Wild Strawberries" has a simple enough plot: an aging professor, full of regrets about his life, travels across Sweden (to the surprise of his maid and son, who had his day planned for him) on his way to a ceremony in honor of him.
It might be seen as an allegory in why making plans based on a dream you have the night before is unlikely to add wildness or strawberries to your day.The film seems more like that of a young, naive director playing with university ideas and quite possibly trying to antagonize a professor he hated, or simply fool him into grading the film highly by not committing to anything and leaving it open for interpretation.At best, it's an interesting look into the Summer conventions and traditions of Sweden in the 1950s where pipe smoking is viewed as healthy and marrying cousins is normal.
The story unfolds beautifully as we get a deeper sense of Isak, who I assume is an alter ago of Ingmar Bergman at that stage of his life (he was thirty-nine when the film was released).It pains me to know that the majority of people my age would rather watch an Adam Sandler movie or "The Rock" than something like this.
The story unfolds beautifully as we get a deeper sense of Isak, who I assume is an alter ago of Ingmar Bergman at that stage of his life (he was thirty-nine when the film was released).It pains me to know that the majority of people my age would rather watch an Adam Sandler movie or "The Rock" than something like this.
Hey, I liked "Big Daddy" and I love Nicolas Cage, but "Wild Strawberries" is one of the few films I've seen that could possibly change the way I live my life.
Hey, I liked "Big Daddy" and I love Nicolas Cage, but "Wild Strawberries" is one of the few films I've seen that could possibly change the way I live my life.
In fact, it's probably the most vital part of the movie -- Isak may not like it, bbut once he gets past it, he has the option to develop.I don't know if the film is a masterpiece -- it's my introduction to Bergman, so once I see "Cries and Whispers," "Fanny and Alexander," "Persona" and "The Seventh Seal" (if I can get through it, this time) I'll come back to this film with a new perspective, or at least see it as a part of Bergman's whole.
In fact, it's probably the most vital part of the movie -- Isak may not like it, bbut once he gets past it, he has the option to develop.I don't know if the film is a masterpiece -- it's my introduction to Bergman, so once I see "Cries and Whispers," "Fanny and Alexander," "Persona" and "The Seventh Seal" (if I can get through it, this time) I'll come back to this film with a new perspective, or at least see it as a part of Bergman's whole.
Wild Strawberries is a story of a journey to past, dreams, nightmares, memories, fears and the choices made in life.Ingmar Bergman's films are clearly European modernism, and his films are actually the finest example of it.