Barnes & Noble

The most hauntingly beautiful road-trip movie ever made, Wild Strawberries is at once profound and simple. This 1957 Ingmar Bergman masterpiece offers a portrait of a man's life within the events of a single day. An elderly doctor, Isak Borg (famed Swedish director Victor Sjöström), ventures off in the car with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) to attend a ceremony honoring his 50 years of medical service. Rather than using a linear narrative, Bergman enhances the doctor's journey with reminders of his past: The people and places he encounters along the way trigger memories and reveries that bring him face-to-face with the meaning of his life (and his impending death). Bergman's remarkable dexterity with unconscious material makes the film's several dream sequences subtly chilling; they affect the rest of the narrative, and have inspired filmmakers ever since. This simple afternoon drive acquires the qualities of a daydream. With its unique combination of sharp, revelatory dialogue, evocative imagery, and careful symbolism, Wild Strawberries has a liquid clarity that is unforgettable. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

After exploring his disillusionment with religion in his previous films, Ingmar Bergman adopted a humanistic approach for this classic study in isolationism. Legendary Scandinavian director Victor Sjöström stars as Isak Borg, an aging medical professor who reassesses his life while journeying to his former university to receive an honorary degree. Borg travels with his estranged daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) and revisits many of the landmarks of his past, conjuring up memories of his family and of his onetime sweetheart Sara (Bibi Andersson). Returning to the present, he meets a teenage girl who resembles the long-departed Sara. She hitches a ride with the professor and Marianne, as do a ceaselessly bickering married couple. These new characters eventually become intertwined with Borg's hazy flashbacks and fantasies, as the old man recalls the disappointments and disillusionments that have left him cold and guilt-ridden, attributes emphasized when he encounters his equally cold and resentful son. Bookending Borg's odyssey of self-discovery are a series of symbolic images at the beginning of the film (a clock without hands, a man without a face) and a hauntingly beautiful finale, in which professor is beckoned back to the "perfect" world he left behind so many years earlier. This classic art movie remains one of Bergman's most accessible films and one of the most influential European art movies of its generation. Its intense focus on one man's thoughts, regrets, and memories set the tone for innumerable psychological character studies in its wake. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 037429162422
• Source: CRITERION
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: Pan & Scan
• Sound: Dolby Digital, monaural
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:31:00
• Sales Rank: 5,950

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks
• Essential Art House, Volume 1

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