The Cinematheque

One of Ingmar Bergman’s pinnacle works—and an excellent entry point into his extraordinary cinema—Wild Strawberries is an intensely moving, highly lyrical drama of affirmation and reconciliation. Victor Sjöström, Sweden’s pre-eminent director before Bergman, gives a memorable performance as Isak Borg, a distinguished professor travelling by car from Stockholm to Lund, where he is to receive an honorary degree. Accompanying him is daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), whose marriage to Borg’s son Evald (Gunnar Björnstrand) is troubled. A flood of memories, daydreams, and nightmares assails the aging protagonist along the way, forcing him to take stock of his life, confront his shortcomings, and accept his mortality. The film’s dream sequences are striking, as are the single-shot transitions, from present to past and back again. In tandem with The Seventh Seal, released the same year, Wild Strawberries established the international vogue for Bergman’s cinema.

Golden Bear, Berlin 1958