Wild Strawberries was Ingmar Bergman’s next project after The Seventh Seal. As such, its shares some thematic similarities with its predecessor, while its setting is entirely different.
Grade: A (***** out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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In Wild Strawberries, Doctor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) struggles to find meaning to his life while facing the prospects of death–as did the character of the knight in The Seventh Seal.
Also like the knight, the doctor, who’s 76, is on a journey: he travels along Highway E 4 to a commencement ceremony at the University of Lund, where he will be honored on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of receiving his degree.
For Doctor Borg, his odyssey is a long journey from life to death. As he travels along the E 4, he is besieged by memories and tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
The doctor’s memory, involving wild strawberries, becomes one of the film’s most memorable scenes. It sharpens his awareness that somewhere along the way he has lost sight of the ideals that have defined his youth.
The wild strawberries remind him of the simple joys of life which he has neglected in favor of more intellectual pursuits.
The idea for the film came to Bergman after a predawn drive on the E 4, as he traveled north from Stockholm to Dalarna. When he passed his hometown of Uppsala, he was overcome with a desire to stop and see his grandmother’s home. As he walked into the house, he asked himself, “What if I could suddenly walk into my childhood.”
It’s a universal question that all viewers have asked themselves at one point or another in their lives.
Isak Borg, age 78, is a stubborn and egotistical physician who specialized in bacteriology. Before that he served as a general practitioner in rural Sweden.
He sets out on a long car ride from Stockholm to Lund to be awarded the degree of Doctor Jubilaris 50 years after he received his doctorate from Lund University.
He is accompanied by his pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne who does not much like him; she’s planning to separate from her husband, Evald, Isak’s only son as Evald does not want her to have the baby, their first.
During the trip, Isak is forced by nightmares and daydreams, inevitable old age and impending death, to reevaluate his life.
He meets a series of hitchhikers, each of whom sets off dreams or reveries into Borg’s troubled past.
The first group consists of two young men and their companion, a woman named Sara who is adored by both men. Sara is a double for the love of Isak’s youth. He reminisces about his childhood at the seaside and his sweetheart Sara, with whom he remembered gathering strawberries, but who instead married his brother.
Isak and Marianne next pick up an embittered middle-aged couple, the Almans, whose vehicle had nearly collided with theirs. The pair exchanges such terrible venom and negativity that Marianne stops the car and demands them to leave. The couple reminds Isak of his own unhappy marriage.
In a dream sequence, Isak is asked by Sten Alman, now the examiner, to read “foreign” letters on the blackboard. When he is unable, Alman reads it for him: “A doctor’s first duty is to ask forgiveness,” from which he concludes, “You are guilty of guilt.”
He is confronted by his loneliness and aloofness, recognizing these traits in both his elderly mother, and in his middle-aged physician son, and he gradually begins to accept himself, his past, his present, and his approaching death.
Finally arriving at his destination, he is promoted to Doctor Jubilaris, which proves to be empty ritual.
That night, he bids goodbye to his young friends. As he goes to his bed in his son’s home, he is overcome by a sense of peace, and dreams of family picnic by a lake. Achieving closure and affirmation of life, Borg’s face radiates joy.
My Oscar Book
Oscar Alert
Wild Strawberries was nominated for Best Original Screenplay by Ingmar Bergman.
The winner, however, was the Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedy, Pillow Talk, scripted by Russell Rouse, Clarance Greene, Stanley Shapiro, and Maurice Richlin.
Actor Alert
The Swedish Victor Sjostrom is better known as a director of silent films, including The Wind (1928).
The professor’s daughter-in-law is played by the young Ingrid Thulin, who would become a crucial member of Bergman’s ensemble and later (Cries and Whispers) an international star on her own right (The Damned).
Director Alert
Ingmar Bergman was born in 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden. His father was a pastor, and thus ingrained in him religious concepts that would later surface in his films: sin, confession, punishment, forgiveness and grace.
Bergman became a student of art history and literature at the University of Stockholm, then an errand boy at the Royal Opera House, and finally a filmmaker.
Bergman’s films include Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Fanny and Alexander (1983).
He wrote but did not direct Best Intentions (1992), which won the top award at the Cannes Film Fest.
Directed, written by by Ingmar Bergman
Produced by Allan Ekelund
Cinematography Gunnar Fischer
Edited by Oscar Rosander
Music by Erik Nordgren
Distributed by AB Svensk Filmindustri
Release date: December 26, 1957 (Sweden); 1959 (US release).
Running time: 91 minutes
