Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4530 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-02-25
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL, Import
• Original language: Latin, Swedish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Made in 1957, Wild Strawberries finds the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman at the height of his powers. It's a road movie, in effect: an aged medical professor (Victor Sjöström)--lonely, disillusioned and haunted by dreams of death--travels across country to receive an honorary degree. But as with all good road movies, the outer journey parallels an inner one. Incidents along the road conjure up memories, and Professor Borg finds himself forced to confront the failures and lost opportunities of his life. Gentle and elegiac, Bergman's film is a masterpiece of compassion and reconciliation, and also a tribute to his predecessor Sjöström, the greatest Swedish director of the silent era. The 78-year-old film maker gives an austere, moving performance, and Bergman treats his lined features like a landscape of yearning and regret. Sjöström is ably supported by other members of Bergman's regular repertory company of the period, particularly Bibi Andersson, heartbreakingly appealing, as the lost love of Borg's youth. --Philip Kemp

Amazon.co.uk Review
Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 follow-up to the The Seventh Seal, is a "journey" movie. Victor Sjostrom plays Isak Borg, an elderly retired professor of medicine, setting out by car to the University of Lund to receive a Jubilee doctorate degree. With him on the journey is his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). Along the way, they pick up a bickering couple and three hitchhikers, including effervescent sprite Sara (Bibi Andersson). Borg also experiences some troubling and beautifully realised dream sequences, as well as flashbacks evoked by a visit to the country house of his youth. Through these, we learn of Borg's awareness of his imminent demise and his underlying regret that his personal relationships have always been distant and reserved, especially with his wife and son.

With his magnificently aged and infinitely expressive emotional range borne of his years as a silent movie actor, Sjostrom superbly conveys a dawning sense of remorse and self-realisation. However, the performance is almost too good. The central accusation of the film--that the doctor is "utterly cold"--hardly squares with what we see of him on screen. We just have to take Bergman's word for the doctor's past aloofness. Wild Strawberries is so overpoweringly rich and ruminative a film, however, that what should be a major flaw is reduced to a barely visible crack.

On the DVD: the text-only extras are notes from Bergman's own memoir, in which he discusses his own estrangement from his parents (the autobiographical inspiration for Wild Strawberries) while critic Geoff Andrews' additional comments are helpful. He hails the film as "one of the first great road movies".--David Stubbs

Video Description

DVD Special Features:

Star and director Filmographies
Scene Selection
Geoff Andrew Film notes
Extract from 'Bergman's book 'Images-My life in Film'
The Bergman Collection Trailer

Language: Swedish Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English
Video Aspect Ratio: Original Academy Ratio

Customer Reviews

A SHARP BUT SWEET TASTE
This is one of Bergman's more optimistic films which paradoxically asserts vitality through the subject matter of death, although it has its dark moments like all of his films. The professor, Isak Borg, is approaching the end of his life and the film is about his journey to Lund to receive an honourary degree. ...The film is narrated by Isak Borg and reflects on his idyllic childhood, but we soon realize that we may be watching his imagination rather than the actual events. Alongside these extended flash-backs are dream sequences which remind one of Borg's imminent death from old age, and the narrative of the journey itself. This journey in literal and metaphorical terms is his final pilgrimage, .... Along the journey Borg meets characters and obstacles which remind him of his past and missed opportunities. However, in general I saw this reassessment of his life as a poisitive act.

On the one hand, the tone of this film is one of regret for past events, but on the other it is one of richness and gratitude for the experiences of life. As always with Bergman, the photography is superb and the symbolism precise yet open to interpretation. I would thoroughly recommend this film to any Bergman fan and (it therefore follows) any cinema fan. Certain aspects may appear dated to contemporary film viewers, but if such quality is dated, I want to live in the past along with Isak Borg...

One of Bergman's best and most accessible films
I have watched this film on several occasions and it gets better each time.
It's a kind of 'road movie'. The journey taken across the Swedish landscape by hero Professor Isak also becomes the backward movement of memory and the forward movement toward death.
The surreal dream-scene early in the film, in which Isak sees his own bizarre funeral, sets up the context for the film.
As he goes further and further into his reminiscences, he finds regret in lost love.
These bitter-sweet memories capture the idyllic, ephemeral 'wild strawberries' of the title.
The way in which Bergman moves between the different worlds of the real present, memory and dreams is an object lesson in cinema.
An astounding film which will repay repeated viewing on DVD

Heartwrenching Masterpiece
I think this was the first Ingmar Bergmann film I had ever seen. I had heard that his films were either very deep or very dull. This is deep, but by no means dull - I'd say it's the strongest argument I've seen for cinema being considered art. Watching Victor Sjostrom's character facing the brink of death and looking back nostalgically at his youth, the movie seems to capture the human sense of grief over the passing of time, and getting old - indeed, of mortality.
The performances are terrific - Bibi Andersson couldn't be more cute if she tried and Ingrid Thulin clenches her teeth with admirable restraint throughout. Sjostrom is suprisingly strong - he hadn't acted for nearly 10 years prior to this film, was famed for being a director.
There is no doubt that, like most of Bergmann's films, it operates on several levels, but this is his most accessible film. It moves at a gentle pace but it is constantly captivating and thoroughly moving. If you want to get into his films, then I would advise you to start here. You won't regret it.