Wild Strawberries

4.00
    Wild Strawberries
    1957

    Synopsis

    Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

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    Cast

    • Victor SjöströmProfessor Isak Borg
    • Bibi AnderssonSara
    • Ingrid ThulinMarianne Borg
    • Gunnar BjörnstrandEvald Borg
    • Jullan KindahlAgda
    • Folke SundquistAnders
    • Björn BjelfvenstamViktor
    • Naima WifstrandMrs. Borg
    • Gunnel BroströmBerit Alman
    • Gertrud FridhKarin Borg

    Recommendations

    • 100

      BBC

      This is one of the truly outstanding works of post-war European cinema.
    • 100

      The Guardian

      A wonderfully composed movie in which Ingmar Bergman is able to vary the tone from melancholy to gaiety in the most deeply satisfying way
    • 100

      TV Guide Magazine

      Possibly Ingmar Bergman's finest film and a landmark in film history.
    • 100

      LarsenOnFilm

      The bitter has not yet overpowered the sweet in this early film from writer-director Ingmar Bergman.
    • 100

      Slant Magazine

      Initially, Wild Strawberries appears to be an almost pointedly unsubtle coming-of-age story that’s been goosed with dime-store surrealism and male handwringing masked as intellectual engagement with humankind. But the bluntness is a misdirection that underlines the depth of Bergman’s empathy with his hero as well as his dedication to his real subject, which is the process of mentally freeing oneself from an insidiously limiting self-mythology.
    • 91

      Entertainment Weekly

      A film that goes where many others have gone (yes, this is Scrooge for Ph.D.s) but with a subtlety few have dreamed of?
    • 80

      Chicago Reader

      There's a lot of allegorical baggage on board, but the film's virtues lie in its relative simplicity.
    • 80

      Time Out

      It's an occasionally over-symbolic work (most notably in the opening nightmare sequence), but it's filled with richly observed characters and a real feeling for the joys of nature and youth.

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