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The Magic Works of Ingmar Bergman is now located at www.bergmanorama.com. Please update your bookmarks. Thank you for visiting!
WILD STRAWBERRIES
(1957)
One of Bergman's warmest, and therefore finest films, this concerns an elderly academic�grouchy, introverted, dried up emotionally�who makes a journey to collect a university award, and en route relives his past by means of dreams, imagination, and encounters with others. It's an occasionally over-symbolic work (most notably in the opening nightmare sequence), but it's filled with richly observed characters and a real feeling for the joys of nature and youth. And Sj�str�m�himself a celebrated director, best known for his silent work (which included the Hollywood masterpiece The Wind)�gives an astonishingly moving performance as the aged professor. As Bergman himself wrote of his performance in the closing moments: 'His face shone with secretive light, as if reflected from another reality...It was like a miracle.' (Geoff Andrew, Time Out)
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| Original title: |
Smultronstället ["The wild strawberry patch"] |
| Production: |
Svensk Filmindustri |
| Distribution: |
Svensk Filmindustri |
| Premiere: |
26 December 1957 (Röda Kvarn and Fontänen, Stockholm) |
| Running time: |
91 minutes |
| Language: |
Swedish |
| Filmed: |
on location at Lake Vättern, at the University town of Lund, and at Dalarö and Ängö in the Stockholm archipelago, and at Råsunda Studios; from 2 July to 27 August 1957. |
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| CREDITS |
| Producer: |
Allan Ekelund |
| Director: |
Ingmar Bergman |
| Screenplay: |
Ingmar Bergman |
| Cinematography: |
Gunnar Fischer |
| Art Direction: |
Gittan Gustafsson |
| Music: |
Erik Nordgren, Göte Lovén |
| Editor: |
Oscar Rosander |
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| REVIEWS |
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"If any of you thought you had trouble understanding what Ingmar Bergman was trying to convey in his beautifully poetic and allegorical Swedish film, The Seventh Seal, wait until you see his Wild Strawberries....This one is so thoroughly mystifying that we wonder whether Mr. Bergman himself knew what he was trying to say. As nearly as we can make out�and, frankly, we found The Seventh Seal a tough but comparatively lucid and extraordinarily stimulating film�the purpose of Mr. Bergman in this virtually surrealist exercise is to get at a comprehension of the feelings and the psychology of an aging man....Mr. Bergman, being a poet with the camera, gets some grand, open, sensitive images, but he has not conveyed full clarity in this film."
� Bosley Crowther, The New York Times (23 June 1959)
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"Ingmar Bergman's first big popular success in the United States. It's a very uneven film: an eminent physician (Victor Sjöström) looks back over his life, which is tricked up with gothic effects and contrasts (there are resemblances to passages in Dead of Night and Dreyer's Vampyr) and with peculiarly unconvincing flashbacks and overexplicit dialogue. It's a very lumpy odyssey, yet who can forget Sjöström's face, or the vicious, bickering couple who rasp at each other in the back seat of a car, or the large-scale mask of the beautiful
Ingrid Thulin as the physician's unhappy daughter-in-law? Few movies give us such memorable, emotion-charged images. One can try to forget the irritations: the incredibly callow representatives of youth, the 'cold' rigid son (Gunnar Björnstrand), the disappointingly vacuous parts assigned
Bibi Andersson as the two Saras, the expendable role of
Naima Wifstrand as the ancient mother."
� Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies
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| COMMENTARY |
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"Isak Borg equals me. IB equals Ice and Borg (the Swedish word for fortress). Simple and facile. I had created a figure who, on the outside, looked like my father but was me, through and through. I was then thirty-seven, cut off from all human relations. It was I who had done the cutting off, presumably an act of self-affirmation. I was a loner, a failure, I mean a complete failure. Though successful. And clever. And orderly. And disciplined. I was looking for my father and my mother, but I could not find them. In the final scene of Wild Strawberries there is a strong element of nostalgia and desire: Sara takes Isak Borg by the hand and leads him to a sunlit clearing in the forest. On the other side he can see his parents. They wave to him. One thread goes through the story in multiple variations: shortcomings, poverty, emptiness, and the absence of grace. I didn't know then, and even today I don't know fully, how through Wild Strawberries I was pleading with my parents: see me, understand me, and�if possible�forgive me."
� Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Films (1990)
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"Victor Sjöström was an excellent storyteller, funny and engaging�especially if some young, beautiful woman happened to be present. We were sitting at the very source of film history, both Swedish and American. What a pity that tape recorders were not available at this time. All these external facts are easy to recall. What I had not grasped until now was that Victor Sjöström took my text, made it his own, invested it with his own experiences: his pain, his misanthropy, his brutality, sorrow, fear, loneliness, coldness, warmth, harshness, and ennui. Borrowing my father's form, he occupied my soul and made it all his own�there wasn't even a crumb left over for me! He did this with the sovereign power and passion of a gargantuan personality. I had nothing to add, not even a sensible or irrational comment. Wild Strawberries was no longer my film; it was Victor Sjöström's! It is probably worth noting that I never for a moment thought of Sjöström when I was writing the screenplay. The suggestion came from the film's producer, Carls Anders Dymling. And as I recall, I thought long and hard before I agreed to let him have the part."
� Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film (1990)
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| AWARDS |
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 1958 Grand Prix Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival
1958 Fédération internationale de la presse cinématoraphique award at the Venice Film Festival
1959 Norwegian Film Producers Silver Nugget (Sölvklumpen)
1959 Bodil Statue (Danish Oscar)
1959 National Board of Review Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Actor (Victor Sjöström)
1959 First Prize and Best Actor (Victor Sjöström) Awards at the Mar del Plata Film Festival (Argentina)
1960 Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon) for Best Foreign Film (Italy)
1961 Syrena Warszwaska Award (Polish Film Critics' Association)
1961 David O. Selznick Silver Laurel (U.S.)
1962 Japanese Jury of 70 Award for Best Imported Film
1962 "29 Critics Award" (Japan)
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