SMULTRONSTÄLLET Aka Wild Strawberries
Sweden 1957 Director: Ingmar Bergman Cast: Victor Sjöström, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jullan Kindahl
Rating: 5 out of 5
When I was younger I put my cassette player in front of the TV and recorded the sounds from Wild Strawberries to a tape. I used to listen to this tape when I couldn't sleep. It was much more satisfying than counting sheep. As a side effect, I learned all the lines from the movie. I also learned to appreciate it.
This is the Bergman movie that everyone should have seen. Naturally because it's his best but also because of Sjöström's performance as the old professor. He received his doctorate fifty years ago and now he's going to Lund to become 'doctor jubilaris'.
The professor, Isak Borg, takes the car from Stockholm to Lund together with his daughter-in-law Marianne. Along the way, he is confronted with his past. They take a break at the summer house where he spent the summers of his childhood. A very good scene is where he steps into the dining room where his siblings and relatives sit around the breakfast table just like in the 1890s. Something similar was used by Woody Allen in Crimes and Misdemeanors if i remember correctly.
At the summer house, they pick up three hitchhikers. Sara, Anders and Viktor. Sara looks just like Isak's teenage love Sara who eventually married his brother Sigfrid instead. Anders is studying to become a priest, Viktor to become a physician. This provides Bergman with a symbol for the distance betwen religion and science. The two boys even go into the forest to fight about God's existence.
Another important scene is where they stop at a gas station. The proprietors, Henrik and Eva, tells the professor what a wonderful provincial doctor he was. 'Maybe I should have stayed', the professor replies. But the truth about his past becomes clouded when Henrik answers 'Stayed here? I don't understand what you mean.' The reasons why he moved out isn't revealed to the audience.
All the dreams and hallucinations that he has during the trip make it obvious to the professor what an empty life he has led. The loveless marriage and the emotional distance to his only son Evald. "I'm not really sure if I am his son", Evald tells his wife Marianne. In the end, the professor and Marianne both tell each other how fond they are of each other. He also wants to release Evald from his debt but is interrupted. His proposal to his old housemaid, miss Agda, that they should stop addressing each other with titles and say 'you' to each other is however rejected by the old woman. Bergman at his best with a perfect mix of comedy and drama, funny one-liners and surrealism.
Mattias Thuresson mattias.thuresson@mbox300.swipnet.se 980615
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