(Left to right) Bergman on the set with Bibi Andersson, Victor Sjöström, and Gunnar Fischer
WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Smultronstället) A
Sweden (91 mi)
1957
Where is the friend I seek at break of day?
When night falls I still have not found Him.
My burning heart shows me His traces
I see His traces wherever flowers bloom
His love is mingled with every air.
When night falls I still have not found Him.
My burning heart shows me His traces
I see His traces wherever flowers bloom
His love is mingled with every air.
—Old Swedish poem
A novel approach to
a road movie, using an unusual cast of characters that all somehow blend
together to create a fascinating portrait of a day in the life of an aging man,
Dr. Isak Borg, perfectly embodied by Victor Sjöström (in real life, the
so-called founder of Swedish cinema), who’s being honored by his alma mater
after providing 50 years of distinguished service in the medical
profession. While the film is parodied
for black comedy in the 14-minute short, George Coe and Anthony Lover’s De Düva, In
1968, this Bergman parody was up for Best Short at the Oscars. (14:00),
it’s easy to see why, as the 78-year old Professor Borg, while compiling his
memoirs, is taunted and humiliated by the inner thoughts of his own dreams and
memories, which continue to flashback throughout the film. Rather than serve as a distraction, these are
pleasant indicators that remind us all how important seemingly insignificant
moments in our lives can be, petty squabbles or jealousies with siblings, that
first crush, or deeply humiliating moments that take on different ramifications
as we grow older. Always told with wit
and charm, Sjöström’s cantankerous personality and wonderfully captivating
performance lead the way with his catnaps and fretful night’s sleep, where his
weird dreams seem to dominate his thoughts, opening with a dream image of a giant
clock with no hands, as he walks down a mysterious street that is completely
empty. Checking his pocket watch, it
also has no hands. Finally he sees
someone waiting on the street with his back turned. When he turns to see his face, it is a
disfigured contortion with no eyes or mouth, a body that crumples to the ground
as if dead, with blood streaming down the street. A horse drawn hearse leads a coffin down the
street that mysteriously slips off the cart and lands at the professor’s feet,
where a human hand points into the air from the broken coffin, a hand that
comes alive and grabs his own, where the face in the coffin is also that of his
own, blending the two faces together until he awakens with a jolt. While this is a particularly picturesque
dream, they are all charmingly simple to figure out and are memorable for what
they reveal about the true character of the dreamer. A bit like Persona (1966) without the other woman, this film
dissects Professor Borg’s world, allowing alternate realities, daydreams,
memories, dreams, suppressed emotions of all kinds to interfere with his life
and expose his weaknesses and sensitivities, offering him a different view of
himself that he wouldn’t have had if he were not a passenger on this crazy road
trip.
Interesting that
Bergman was 38 when he made this film, a hauntingly beautiful premonition of
himself as an old man, and long before he was married to his last wife Ingrid,
who he was married to for 24 years, dying 8 years before he did, but on Borg’s
desk is a photo of his deceased wife that bears a striking resemblance to
Bergman’s wife Ingrid. One also must
make mention of Jullan Kendahl, Borg’s live-in homemaker Agda, who has been
with him for something like forty years, who is rudely awoken by the professor
at the crack of dawn and shows the good sense to go right back to bed. But she’s pestered by the old man, which sets
the stage for a long running relationship built on wise cracks and his general
contentious disposition. Needless to
say, the lurid nature of the dream alters the old man’s plans at the last
moment and he decides to drive a car instead of fly to the ceremony, with or
without Agda who sticks with the original plan.
Daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) is also wakened by the fracas and
agrees to drive with the Professor, as she could surprise her husband at the
ceremony. No sooner do they get on the
road that the Professor falls into a short slumber and in a daydream, peers
into earlier memories as they’re taking place, like an outside observer, moving
from the present to the past and back again seemingly with ease, recalling
events that happened at his family’s summer home during his childhood that
become vividly real, the consequences of which, especially the lost
opportunities, continue to nag at him to this day. Along the way, he decides to take a short
detour to visit his 96-year old mother, a cold and disaffected woman whose icy
nature has probably fought off death over the years. Marianne silently observes their dutiful but completely
unaffectionate visit, which reminds her of the marital indifference shown to
her by her own husband.
Changing the focus,
the film instead veers into a completely different direction, picking up a
series of charming hitchhikers. One,
Bibi Andersson, whose effervescent personality gives this film a shot of needed
adrenaline, has the same name as and plays the dual role of Borg’s young fiancé
in his faraway youth, a girl who was similarly faced with the same dilemma
about which boy to choose. Andersson is
accompanied by two guys, a boyfriend (studying to be a parson) and a chaperone,
a believer and a non-believer, who spend the entire film squabbling over the
existence of God, which provides amusing comic relief, a far cry from the
gloomy, near pretentious seriousness of his previous film, The
Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (1957).
In fact, this film’s glorification of life proves to be an antidote to
the oppressive view of death lurking everywhere throughout that earlier
film. Instead WILD STRAWBERRIES is a
gentle stroll down memory lane with a cast of comical characters to enliven
one’s journey. The three kids are
charmingly seductive, the personification of youth with all their awkward
unknowns, set against the surprisingly unsettled nature of the Professor who’s
lost his bearings, feeling a bit more anxious the further along the road he
travels.
They have a brief
encounter with a wretchedly unhappy married couple, meeting them under
accidental circumstances, where the entire group is traveling together for a
short duration having to listen to the back and forth snide remarks between
them becoming ever more crude and hurtful until eventually Marianne simply
kicks them out and drives on without them.
They seem to represent the extreme of a marriage gone wrong, which
unfortunately reminds the Professor of his own guilt-ridden marriage, where in
yet another dream sequence, he recalls his wife’s fury at his measured
impassivity when she informs him of an affair, which still has lingering
aftereffects of powerlessness and self pity, as he even conjures up humiliating
images of flunking a medical exam that he’s never taken. Soon, however, the kids learn of the reason
behind the Professor’s journey, becoming overtly congratulatory, basically
making a fuss over him all of a sudden, to his absolute delight. The seamless editing, moving back and forth
in time, always providing fresh insight into the present, is simply
remarkable. And there’s nothing in
Sjöström’s performance that ever suggests he’s acting.
But just before that
transition, the Professor awakes at a stop where the kids are taking a break
outside the car, where Marianne decides to tell the Professor the real problem
behind her marital difficulties, the reason she left him temporarily and came
to visit the Professor, as her husband didn’t want a child, even after learning
she was pregnant. The full weight of
this stark emotional bomb comes out of nowhere and contrasts against anything
else in the film, as the power of her predicament is devastatingly real and
suddenly becomes the new focus of the film, especially after she compares her
relationship to the icy austerity between the Professor and his mother, afraid
this could happen to her. By the time
the trumpets sound at the university and the pomp and circumstance are in full
regalia, beautifully shot, truly transporting us to another world, somehow all
this laudatory recognition seems so secondary to what really matters in
life. The title of the film reveals the
seasonal nature of life, making reference to Sweden’s short summer seasons,
where the bloom of youth, unfettered by responsibilities, ends all too
soon. In this film that moves so easily
between the interchangability of dreams and reality, much of what we see is
open to interpretation, revealing later connections or understandings that may
have gone unnoticed earlier in our lives, challenging what we believe we know,
what our thoughts of love really are, what our life is worth, perhaps altering
those perceptions as time passes. As
the Professor’s reverie reunites him with the pastoral perfection of his youth,
we realize that in the blink of an eye our reflections could so easily reach a
differing outcome.
