Wild strawberries
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Wild strawberries |
| Original title | Smultronstället |
 | |
| Country of production | Sweden |
| original language | Swedish |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ingmar Bergman |
| script | Ingmar Bergman |
| production | Allan Ekelund |
| music | Erik Nordgren |
| camera | Gunnar Fischer |
| cut | Oscar Rosander |
| occupation | |
| |
Wild Strawberries (Original: Smultronstället ) is in black and white twisted Swedish film drama by Ingmar Bergman from the year 1957 . The film was awarded the Golden Bear and is considered one of Bergman's most important works. The well-known silent film director Victor Sjöström played his last role as an old professor who is confronted with his mistakes while driving through daydreams and memories.
action
78-year-old medical professor Isak Borg, a renowned doctor and scientist, has withdrawn from people in old age. His wife Karin died many years ago, his son Evald, also a doctor, lives in another town. He has little contact with his elderly mother, only his long-time housekeeper Agda still lives with him. Because of a marital dispute, his daughter-in-law Marianne has temporarily stayed with him. At night the professor has a nightmare in which he sees himself lying in the coffin. On the day of his 50th anniversary of his doctorate , he spontaneously decides to take the car from his home in Stockholm to the event location Lund instead of taking the plane . Marianne also gets into Isak's car because she wants to see Evald again.
Marianne and Isak have a few arguments on the journey - she finds Isak cold-hearted because he would not help his depressed son, who is in debt to him, personally and financially. Isak, on the other hand, sees his own behavior as being principled. During the trip, Isak is repeatedly confronted with his past, which he looks back on. He stops at the former summer house of the Borg family, where Isak remembers his youth and his fiancée Sara, who eventually married his brother, who, unlike him, was less solid but more adventurous.
Isak and Marianne take three young hitchhikers with them who are on their way to Italy and who stay in Isak's car until the end of the line at Lund. The young hitchhiker's name is Sara, like Isak's childhood sweetheart, and she also remembers her outwardly, which leads to further memories. Her male companions are an aspiring priest and an aspiring doctor, who both woo their love and regularly debate philosophical issues with one another. With his ironic humor and friendly demeanor, the professor wins the sympathies of hitchhikers. Later, the Alman couple joins them, and they got off the road during an argument with their car and their car overturned. With combined forces everyone manages to turn the car around again, but the engine fails. So Isak takes them with him. When a dispute between the couple escalated, Marianne asked them to get out. The couple leaves the car, the others drive on alone.
The young couple Åkerman, at whose gas station Isak refuel his car, waives Isak's gasoline bill on the grounds that he used to do so many good things as a doctor in the area. Isak is both irritated and touched by the gesture. He then visits his 96-year-old mother, whose ten children are all dead except Isak. The visit is very formal, Isak's lonely mother looks even colder than her son. During the onward journey, Isak falls into further dreams and memories in which Mr. Alman appears as an examiner and Isak confronts his mistakes and repressed memories. In the dream, Isak watches his late wife cheating on another man because she feels unhappy in marriage to the highly moral, distant Isak. When Isak wakes up again, Marianne tells him that she is expecting a child and has temporarily moved in with Isak because of a dispute with Evald, who does not want to have children. Through the encounters with Isak and his mother, Marianne realizes that the cold is a family problem and has rubbed off on her husband. Isak and Marianne confess that they both remembered their own unhappy marriages through the quarreling couple. The professor seems to realize that he has lacked love and reciprocity in his life.
Finally they reach their destination, where Isak receives his honor. Although he is unable to establish close contact with his son, he hears with relief that Evald wants to stay with Marianne. Isak and Marianne explain their sympathy to each other. The three young hitchhikers also admire the professor and sing another song in front of his window, while the hitchhiker Sara assures him of her eternal love. Finally Isak goes to sleep, his memory returns to the idyllic summer house and to his parents, who sit on the lake shore and wave to him, but when he calls out to them, they do not hear him. Isak smiles half asleep.
background
Production and film launch
Wild Strawberries was created between July 2 and August 27, 1957 and was shown in Swedish cinemas on December 26 of the same year. For the aged Victor Sjöström it was his last role, he then withdrew into private life. The film crew was concerned about his health and Sjöström found the filming very stressful. He had been told beforehand that in his role he only had to remember the past - but ultimately Professor Borg appeared in all but one scene.
The film opened on July 21, 1961 in the FRG and on July 8, 1966 in the GDR .
Position in Bergman's work
Wilde Erdbeeren shows clear influences of the playwright August Strindberg , as can be seen particularly in the dramas Ein Traumspiel and Nach Damascus , in which the sums of life are also viewed critically. The film also shows influences from the silent film director Victor Sjöström , who was admired by Bergman and who took on a role in a Bergman film for the second time after An die Freude (1950). As Bergman later wrote, Sjöström had made the text his own to a considerable extent. A trademark of Sjöström's silent films like Der Fuhrmann des Todes , Die Ingmarssöhne and Der Wind was the strong integration of nature in order to express the emotional worlds of the characters and to capture moods - wild strawberries also integrate nature, for example with the representation of the beautiful surroundings of the country house from the professor's youth.
While writing the script and filming, Bergman was under the impression of his failed third marriage to Gun Grut, the deteriorating relationship with Bibi Andersson and the ongoing feud with his parents. Looking back, Bergman expressed dissatisfaction with the drawing of the three young hitchhikers and the episode with the quarreling couple Alman. On the other hand, he succeeded in moving through the levels of time, space and dream reality more easily than in his later Face to Face . Wild strawberries is an example of introspection in the film, as Professor Borg recognizes himself and his weaknesses in the course of the film in order to draw conclusions from them at the end.
Ingrid Thulin made her debut in a Bergman film in Wild Strawberries ; the director had written the role especially for her. Wild strawberries have received numerous awards and underpinned Bergman's international reputation following the success of The Smile of a Summer Night (1955) and The Seventh Seal (1957).
Bergman varied the scene in which Borg sees himself lying in the coffin in From Face to Face in 1976 , there too the main character, a psychiatrist, sees her own corpse in a coffin in a nightmare.
Critic Stig Björkman drew parallels between Wilde Erdbeeren , Roberto Rossellini's Journey in Italy (1953) and Jean-Luc Godard's Eleven o'clock (1965) because of the travel motif and the structure that he considered to be comparable .
synchronization
The German dubbed version was created in 1957 for the cinema at Beta Technik in Munich under the direction of Manfred R. Köhler .
| roll | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Professor Isak Borg | Victor Sjöström | Hans Nielsen |
| Marianne Borg | Ingrid Thulin | Marianne Wischmann |
| Sara (Isaac's childhood sweetheart / hitchhiker) | Bibi Andersson | Johanna von Koczian |
| Evald Borg, Isak's son | Gunnar Bjornstrand | Malte Jaeger |
| Agda, Isak's housekeeper | Jullan Kindahl | Lina Carstens |
| Different, hitchhiker | Folke Sundquist | Thomas Bride |
| Viktor, hitchhiker | Bjorn Bjelfvenstam | Michael Cramer |
| Sten Alman, arguing husband | Gunnar Sjöberg | Hans Baur |
| Mrs. Alman | Gunnel Broström | Maria Landrock |
| Henrik Akerman, gas station attendant | Max von Sydow | Til Kiwe |
| Karin Borg, Isak's wife (flashback) | Gertrud Fridh | Alice Franz |
| Sigfrid Borg, Isak's brother (flashback) | Gunnar Sjöberg | Niels Clausnitzer |
Reviews
Wild strawberries received outstanding reviews at its premiere and still today. In a survey of film critics by the film magazine Sight & Sound in 2012, for example, the classic was voted one of the 100 best films of all time.
“Ingmar Bergman's sensitively designed masterpiece about life, God and death fascinates through the virtuoso interlacing of realistic and surreal stylistic devices, of psychological character portraits and philosophical discourse. Outstanding in the leading role: the Swedish theater and silent film director Victor Sjöström . "
"One of the most complex and moving works in film history."
Awards (selection)
- Golden Bear to Ingmar Bergman and FIPRESCI Prize to Victor Sjöström at the 1958 Berlin International Film Festival
- National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor (Victor Sjöström) 1959
- Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film 1960
- Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 1960 Academy Awards
Aftermath
In 1966, Bayerischer Rundfunk, together with Südwestrundfunk and Österreichischer Rundfunk , produced strawberries as a 91-minute radio play under the direction of Rudolf Noelte Wilde . The main speakers were:
- Ewald Balser : Professor Dr. Isak Borg
- Margarete Haagen : Agda, his housekeeper
- Elisabeth Schwarz : Marianne, his daughter-in-law
- Robert Graf : Ewald, his son
- Cordula Trantow : Sara
- Ursula Krieg : Isaks Borg's mother
- Malte Jaeger : Alman, engineer
- Martha Wallner : Berit, Alman's wife
literature
- Thomas Koebner : Wild strawberries - Smultronstället . In the S. (Ed.): Classic films - descriptions and comments . 5th edition. 5 vols. Reclam, Stuttgart 2006 [1. Ed. 1995], ISBN 978-3-15-030033-6 , Vol. 2: 1946-1962, pp. 352-359.
- Thomas Koebner: [Article] Ingmar Bergman. In the S. (Ed.): Film directors. Biographies, descriptions of works, filmographies. With 109 illustrations. 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008 [1. Edition 1999], ISBN 978-3-15-010662-4 , pp. 45-61, here 52f.
Web links
- Wild strawberries in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Review by Ulrich Behrens on Filmzentrale.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Wild strawberries on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 9, 2012.
- ↑ a b Wild Strawberries in the Lexicon of International Films .
- ↑ a b Ingmar Bergman: Pictures, Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-462-02133-8 , pp. 13-25.
- ↑ a b c Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman on Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 , p. 165.
- ↑ Sight and Sound
- ^ Lexicon "Films on TV", extended new edition, Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 928.
- ↑ Wild strawberries (radio play) in the ARD radio play archive, accessed on July 17, 2020.
- ↑ Wild strawberries (radio play) in the audio play database, accessed on July 17, 2020 (PDF: 35.7 kB)