Cinema
Wild Strawberries
Smultronstället
Ingmar Bergman · 1957
Synopsis
Isak Borg, a seventy-eight-year-old professor of medicine, selfish and solitary, is to be made a jubilee doctor at the University of Lund. The night before, a dream shakes him, and he decides to travel there by car rather than by plane. His daughter-in-law Marianne goes with him, and tells him along the way what she thinks of him. He stops at the places of his childhood, picks up hitchhikers, dreams and remembers, and at last measures what he has let slip by.
Context
The screenplay was written in hospital, where he stayed for nearly two months the previous winter. The leading role went to Victor Sjöström, who was the same age as his character and had been the first great Swedish filmmaker; it was his last role. The film follows a road from Stockholm to Scania and moves from the journey to dreams and memories; several of its images refer back to Sjöström's own silent cinema. It is often cited as a model of the road movie.
Who it is for
Ninety-one minutes, in Swedish. The scenes on the road, those the character dreams and those he remembers follow one another without announced transitions.
Prizes and reception
Golden Bear at Berlin in 1958 and Golden Globe for best foreign film; it is one of the most cited films in the history of cinema.