Thursday Minute
No. 160 | September 16, 2010

It Was a Very Good Year … 1957

Our theme this week
Notable films of 1957

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Sweet Smell of Success
Tuesday         —   The Bridge on the River Kwai
Wednesday    —   12 Angry Men

Wild Strawberries

To make the point that 1957 was a very good year for movies, I might have started and stopped with Ingmar Bergman.  With more than 60 directing credits to his name, he was a prolific filmmaker and two of his best films were released during the year.  Both were landmarks of postwar art house cinema and helped cement Bergman’s status as one of the great artists of the medium.  On another day, I’d have picked The Seventh Seal to feature (and someday, I will).  Instead, for now, let’s take a look at Bergman’s second film of the year, Wild Strawberries.

No one ever accused Bergman of being easy.  His films, by and large, are serious, unsentimental affairs.  They demand a lot from the audience.  The specter of death is never far away, and so it is with Wild Strawberries, which (relatively speaking) may rank as one of Bergman’s warmest and most humane films, and perhaps his most satisfying.

The film stars one of the founding fathers of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström, the longtime director and actor in his final role.  Sjöström plays Professor Isak Borg, a man in his late 70s who takes a long road trip with his daughter-in-law to return to his old school, where he is to be awarded an honorary degree for his work as a doctor.  The trip gives Borg a chance to examine his life, and through a series of encounters, nightmares, and excursions into his past, he sees the failings of his relationships and the limits of his ways.  Borg has been a cold soul, missing out on many of the joys that life may have offered him.  He’s at the end now, too late to change anything, but he does finally reach an understanding, and acceptance.

Wild Strawberries is an allegorical film, expressionistic at times, perhaps more than it needs to be.  More than anything, though, it’s the story of a life, of a man who at last gets an honest look at his past, and who finds disappointment, but also more.  That’s something we all can learn from.

A local note
If you’re in Los Angeles, or plan to be, this week, you have a chance to catch the Bergman retrospective at LACMA.  Screenings run through Saturday, with The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander among the films still on tap.

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Wild Stawberries (Smultronstället) (1957)
Ingmar Bergman, writer-director
Gunnar Fischer, cinematographer
Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, et al.

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Wild Stawberries (Smultronstället) (1957)
Dream Sequence

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Bergman’s Dream (short)
By P.S. Dean
Excerpt from The Magic Lantern, Bergman’s autobiography
Clips from Bergman films

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Quote of note
Borg:  What is the punishment?
Alman:  The punishment?  Well, I guess it’ll be the usual.
Borg:  The usual?
Alman:  Yes.  The punishment is loneliness.
Borg:  Is there no way out?
Alman:  Don’t ask me.  I don’t know anything about these things.
—Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström), Sten Alman (Gunnar Sjöberg), Wild Strawberries (1957)

…58…59…60.