I was quite sure I was an unwanted child, growing out of a cold womb.
—Ingmar Bergman, from Images: My Life in Films
It is said, with some truth, that there are three major film-makers who empty cinemas these days: Bergman, Godard and Chaplin. In Bergman's case, it is almost certainly because the 'gloomy Swede' tag has taken root. There's just enough truth in the travesty to allow one to sympathise. After all, didn't he envisage God as a spider in Through A Glass Darkly? But he also made one of the most subtle of Mozartian romantic comedies in Smiles Of A Summer Night, and Fanny and Alexander, his last major film, could hardly be called depressing.
The film I constantly go back to, however, is Wild Strawberries (1957), which, while scarcely a bag of laughs, has a compassionate view of life that best illustrates the more optimistic side of Bergman's puzzled humanity.
At its centre is 76-year-old Professor Isak Borg, a distinguished medical scientist who travels from Stockholm to Lund with his daughter-in-law to receive an honorary doctorate. On the 400-mile car journey the old man remembers his past - the girl he loved who married his brother instead, and his own bitterly unsuccessful marriage. Despite his benevolent exterior, to which everyone pays tribute, he recognises in himself something arid and distant.
The film opens with a dream sequence that has been stolen from ever since. Borg arrives at a house with boarded up windows in the old quarter of Stockholm. He sees a clock with no hands and an old hearse approaching. One of its wheels gets caught up on a lamppost and a coffin falls out. The outstretched hand of the corpse within tries to pull Borg inside.
One of the prime reasons is what can only be described as the transcendent performance of Victor Sjostrom as Professor Borg. Sjostrom was the great Swedish silent-era director, who died aged 80, not long after the film was completed and whose The Phantom Carriage had so influenced Bergman. It was he who made the final scene one of the most serene of all Bergman's endings. "Sjostrom's face shone", said the director. "It emanated light - a reflection of a different reality, hitherto absent. His whole appearance was soft and gentle, his glance joyful and tender. It was like a miracle".
Later, Bergman admitted that the character of Borg was an attempt to justify himself to his own parents, but that Sjostrom had taken his text, made it his own and invested it with Sjostrom's often painful experiences. It is still, however, chiefly concerned with forgiveness between parents and children and the lost possibilities of youth.
If the theme of Wild Strawberries is how life can become atrophied and sterile - often repeated from generation to generation - Bergman's working out of his argument is extraordinarily detailed, since almost all those in the film to whom this applies have no idea what is happening to them.
Isak's admired and respected mother, for instance, is slowly revealed as hard and mean-spirited, though not to herself. And it is only when his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) speaks honestly to him in the car that Isak begins his journey of self-recognition.
What makes the film great is its nearness to each of us. And its almost Christian insistence on the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/jun/10/1
The Title: "Smultronstället"
While translated as "Wild Strawberries," the Swedish title Smultronstället carries a specific idiomatic weight:
Literal Meaning: A wild strawberry patch.
Idiomatic Meaning: A "hidden gem" or a secret, cherished place that holds great personal or sentimental value.
Thematic Significance: For Isak, the strawberry patch is the site of his greatest heartbreak (watching the woman he loved with his brother). The film explores how these "cherished places" in our memory can become sites of both intense nostalgia and deep-seated regret.
Themes and Symbolism
The Burden of Guilt
Throughout the film, Isak is accused of being "cold," "aloof," and "dead while alive." In one surreal dream sequence, he is forced to undergo a medical examination where he fails to diagnose a patient who is actually laughing at him. The "verdict" of his life’s trial is that he is "guilty of guilt."
Redemption and Reconciliation
Unlike many of Bergman’s more pessimistic works, Wild Strawberries ends on a note of grace. Through his interactions with Marianne and the young hitchhikers, Isak begins to "thaw." The final image of the film—Isak dreaming of his parents waving to him from across a sunlit lake—suggests a hard-won peace and the possibility of forgiveness.
The Double Role
Bibi Andersson plays two roles: the 19th-century Sara (Isak's lost love) and the 20th-century Sara (the hitchhiker). This casting emphasizes the cyclical nature of life and how the past constantly intrudes upon and informs the present.
Production Context
Victor Sjöström: Bergman cast the legendary silent film director Sjöström as Isak Borg. Sjöström’s weary, weathered face provides the film's emotional anchor. It was his final acting role; he died three years after the film’s release.
Personal Origins: Bergman wrote the screenplay while hospitalized, drawing on his own troubled relationships with his parents and his fear of becoming an "old, tired egotist."
Visual Language and Cinematography
Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer used high-contrast black-and-white photography to distinguish between the various layers of reality:
The Present: Shot with sharp, realistic clarity.
The Memories: Often bathed in an overexposed, "dream-like" glow, making the past seem more vibrant and alive than Isak's current existence.
The Nightmares: Influenced by German Expressionism, utilizing long shadows, distorted perspectives, and jarring close-ups to evoke Isak's internal dread.
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