WILD STRAWBERRIES Movie Review

Smultron-Stallet

Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) has awakened from a dream of his own death. It is the day on which he is to receive an honorary degree, and he embarks on a motor trip to the university, accompanied by his daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). Along the way, the professor's memories are stirred by Marianne's scolding him for his iciness; that emotional coldness seems to run in the Borg family, for it's the same trait that has prompted Marianne to decide to leave her husband. There's a stop along the way for a visit to the house where he grew up, and other passengers are picked up as well, stirring other kinds of remembrances, some long repressed. By the end of the day, the seemingly impenetrable wall the professor has constructed around himself begins to crumble, and the first possibilities of vulnerability and emotional contact with others can be seen. Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries isn't exactly beyond criticism, but it's become such an important part of film culture that's it's almost hard to imagine the modern cinema without it. Yes, there are flaws in the picture—some of the pacing seems uneven, and some of the flashback sequences that are supposed to be stylized simply come off as stilted. But these are negligible problems in a wonderful, heartbreakingly beautiful piece of filmmaking. The performances represent some of the finest ensemble work that Bergman has ever produced, but towering above everything is the great and emotionally naked performance of Victor Sjöström. An extraordinary director himself, Sjöström worked in the United States during much of the 1920s, where he created the amazing He Who Gets Slapped for Lon Chaney, as well as his directorial masterpiece, the 1928 The Wind, starring Lillian Gish. (Boston's Alloy Orchestra has created a superlative new score for The Wind; go wherever you have to to hear them accompany it.) Woody Allen, hardly a closet admirer of Bergman's, reproduced the structure of Wild Strawberries in his recent Deconstructing Harry. Wild Strawberries won the Grand Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and was an Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.

NEXT STOP … The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, Citizen Kane

1957 90m/B SW Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Folke Sundquist, Bjorn Bjelvenstam; D: Ingmar Bergman; W: Ingmar Bergman. Golden Globe Awards ‘60: Best Foreign Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘59: Best Story & Screenplay. VHS, LV, 8mm VYY, HMV, FOX