DVD/150: SMULTRONSTALLET (WILD STRAWBERRIES) (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

Ingmar Bergman followed his masterpiece DET SJUNDE INSEGLET (THE SEVENTH SEAL) with another, the wonderful SMULTRONSTALLET (WILD STRAWBERRIES).

As the old doctor who reviews his unhappy life while travelling to receive a university honour, Bergman cast the silent film director Victor Sjostrom who gives an astonishing performance.

Although Bergman had directed Sjostrom eight years earlier, he found Strostrom more frail and frustrated at his failing memory; co-star Ingrid Thulin agreed to insist it was her fault if one of their scenes together went wrong.

Troubled by unsettling dreams of mortality. Dr. Isak Borg travels by car to receive a lifetime achievement award from his old university.  He is accompanied by daughter-in-law Marianne who admits that, like most people including his son, Borg is considered aloof and unlikeable.

A visit to his childhood summer home reawakens memories of his love for his cousin Sara, who married his brother.

Shelf or charity shop?  Well it IS part of a cracking Bergman box-set...  but even if on it's own, it's one to keep as it's Bergman at his most haunting and masterful. Helped immeasureably by Erik Nordgren's score and the poetic cinematography of Gunnar Fischer, it's a film to get lost in.  As I said Sjostrom, in his last film, is remarkably in almost every scene but is wonderfully restrained so his final show of emotion seems unsurprisingly natural.  He is supported by some of Bergman's favourite actors - Gunnel Lindblom appears as Borg's sister in flashback, Max von Sydow is a garage attendant who remembers Dr Borg as a caring local doctor, Gunnar Bjornstrand is Borg's son slowly turning into an unemotional shell like his father while Ingrid Thulin is excellent as Marianne, hiding her own secret from her father-in-law.  Bergman's relationship was ending with Bibi Andersson but he shines a spotlight on her talent by casting her in two key roles: luminous in flashback as Borg's beloved cousin who he loved from afar and, in the present day, as the free-spirited young girl who hitch-hikes a ride with her two lovers from Borg and Marianne; seeing the young trio begins the thaw in Borg's heart. By avoiding the inherent sentiment - just think of all the Hollywood films where a crotchety old man finds 'redemption' - Bergman makes WILD STRAWBERRIES universal.