Europe Endless - Scandinavia: Wild Strawberries (Dir Ingmar Bergman, 1h31m, 1975)

Think of Bergman and you think of Sweden; or rather, you think of a stereotypical Bergman's film: Sweden, bleakness, misery, of harsh winters and landscapes, Bergman's own idyll of Fåro writ large, of men tormented by their own existential crises, or external forces, most notably religion, into which tragic fractured women peer in. This of course is reductive, even to dear Ingmar Bergman: trying to suggest a long-held set of stereotypes of one director's work defines Swedish cinema and the nation at large is like saying that Sweden can be be understood by popping in "ABBA Gold" into the CD changer on your Volvo on your way to IKEA. Yet Bergman has become a shorthand for Swedish cinema, for better or worse, and whilst many of his films were on the shortlist to consider, I've chosen the travels of an elderly doctor, both to a prize giving ceremony, and back into his past and his childhood, as he contends with his life and his mortality that we turn, as we go picking Wild Strawberries

Like Denmark, Sweden's cinema history begins in the silent era, with an early international star of this era being one Greta Garbo, but like Garbo's move to the States, Swedish cinema soon struggled against the bright lights of Hollywood, something that the move to sound and the Second World War did little to alleviate the American of Swedish cinema. Enter, thus, Kris, (Crisis, 1946), and its director, Ingmar Bergman, who, within a decade, will come to dominate the nation's cinema, two of his proteges being cinematographer Sven Nykvist and provocative filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman. In Bergman's wake would come directors such as Lukas Moodysson, arguably a successor to Bergman in his depiction of relationships and the starkness of modern Sweden, Tomas Alfredson, and Lasse Hallström, the latter two finding success in international cinema. 

Many of Bergman's films, including his international breakthrough, Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955), are undeniably comic, and warm-hearted; yet we find Bergman in 1957 with his third marriage to Gun Bergman disintegrating. Bergman attempted suicide in 1955, and in the same year had suffered from depression, convinced he was dying of stomach cancer. Bergman's 1957 is a sum of two films; both confront mortality in very different ways; one of them, of course, is Bergman's masterwork, the hugely influential, oft-imitated The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet), in which Death (Bengt Ekerot) stalks a knight (Max Von Sydow, also appearing briefly in Wild Strawberries). Wild Strawberries, in contrast, is practically Bergman's filmography reproduced in miniature

We are travelling with Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström); Borg narrates the film, introducing himself as "rather lonely. My life has been full of hard work and I am grateful"; it's not difficult to read Borg as Bergman, though much of the gloomy grumpy Borg is undeniably Sjöström, who was nearing 80 during production, had difficulty remembering lines, leading to some concerning on-set behaviour where the veteran actor would argue with Bergman and bang his head against the walls of the set. Without this cold doctor, married to his job after the death of his wife, the film does not work: it is his fear of his own mortality, and the self-exploration that he goes on that form the backbone of this film but without the morose figure of Borg, it rings hollow. 

Against this, Bergman and cinematographer, Gunnar Fischer enter Borg's dreams, these are initially dominated by unsettling images and dreamlike logic - such that the elderly man almost immediately finds himself confronting his own mortality, in the form of his own body carried via hearse. The other dreams, no less Bergman-esque, return to Borg's childhood, where his relationship with his distant mother, his late wife, and the figure of Sara (Bibi Andersson); what adds to this imagery is the elderly Isak standing in for his child-self, leading to some bittersweet moments. This too is arguably Borg-as-Bergman, the director noting that "I am forever living in my childhood"; it is this juxtaposition that arguably drives the film's narrative. Yet, even here, Bergman's view of this idyllic childhood is juxtaposed by Isak being visually trapped in his ageing form, unable to allow himself the freedom of being a child, much as Bergman's own childhood was deeply unhappy.

Further, Borg is a man struggling with his past; travelling with Borg is his connection to his son, his daughter in law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), whose relationship with Isak and Evald is deteriorating, and who plans to divorce the latter due to their disagreements over whether to have a child. Here the Bergman gloom is pervasive: we see an echo in this in a argumenative couple who the duo, with a trio of young people in tow, pick up: they are, ultimately, not only an echo of Isak's relationship with his late wife, a relationship that is, as he and the other passengers eventually round on them, caustic and cruel, belittling each other and acting simultaneously as unflattering mirror of what has been in Isak's life, and what seems inevitable, in Marianne's - indeed, later Bergman calls back to this scene with Evald and Marianne. This is to say nothing of the distant relationship with his mother, who has outlived her other children, and whose lonely, aloof persona reflects that of her son.

Yet, this is where the fog lifts, where, for all the bittersweetness of these fleeting moments of happiness, where the film is joyful! Much of this has to do with the reflection of Sara in the form of a young woman which Isak and Marianne pick up: as part of a trio of young adults, so Isak is confronted by the joy of being alive, with the regret and fear of death that has held him back: there is a tenderness, as much for the professor, who warms to the trio, to living in the now, as it is for Bergman himself. For all his purported gloominess, there is undeniable warmth to be had in Bergman's films. For all his purported melancholy, it is a warmer, happier, Borg who we leave in memories of childhood.

Through it, we get a vision of a very different Ingmar Bergman, not the great grim figure in the bleak Swedish landscape, inhospitable and at war with himself, god and fate, but a man just as capable of moments of joy, of loving life, and the fleeting happiness of our everyday lives. Wild Strawberries is a rare glimpse of another side of one of Sweden's greatest directors. 

Rating: Highly Recommended

Wild Strawberries is available on Blu-Ray from Criterion and on streaming from AppleTV and the BFI Player

Next week, we travel onward to Norway, in a noir beneath the midnight sun, in Insomnia.