Wild Strawberries. (15.)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman 1957.
Starring Victor Sjostrom, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Bjorn Bjelfvenstam, Folke Sundquist and Jullan Kindahl. Out on blu-ray from the BFI https://shop.bfi.org.uk/ or as part of their Ingmar Bergman: Volume II collection. Black and white. 92 mins.
There will be a review of Bergman’s seminal movie but before we get to that I wanna tell you a story. Like all good stories, it's a story about the good old days. Back in the 80s, there used to be a magical place called The Scala, a repertory cinema in Pentonville Road. It was a beautiful old building in a rough part of town and every day and all night on Saturdays, it showed a wide and wild variety of films. Cult films, classic films, crap films, obscure films, naughty films, popular films, films with Dick Miller in. They published these beautiful monthly programme posters that were works of art and you could just pick them up for free when you were walking past.
Search the internet and you’ll find people windbagging nostalgic about how great it was. Scala nostalgists tend to play up how seedy and debauched it was. And that was definitely part of it: the area to the back of King's Cross was a red-light district and some very odd characters would find their way into the auditorium. But it wasn't all Russ Meyer, John Waters and Thundercrack. My favourite memories were often in the afternoons, where you could get a coffee and a cake and, for no great amount of money, watch a double or triple bill. I saw everything there. I gave up much of my late teens and early twenties to it. I could've made something of myself if it hadn't been for the Scala. (Yeah, right.) And then in 1993, I went to live abroad for a year and a half and when I came back Bobby Moore had died and the Scala was closed. Warner Bros had sued on Kubrick's instigation after a secret screening of A Clockwork Orange which its director had banned from being shown in this country. (I move away for a year and a half and the whole damn country goes to ruin.)
The Scala, which is now a music venue, was an integral part of my life but we didn't get off to the best of starts. My first trip there was for a Sunday afternoon triple bill of Ingmar Bergman classics. First, there was The Seventh Seal. Awful. Then Smiles On a Summer Night, more awful. And finally this, boring. All the way through, I kept wondering what the hell was in these black and white films that equated masterpiece. The Seventh Seal still looks like baloney to me but, some thirty-five years on, I have seized the opportunity offered by this BFI release to revisit the last film on that afternoon, and I think we have reached an understanding.
Wild Strawberries is a day in the life of an aged physician Igor (Sjostrom), travelling by car to pick up a prestigious award. He is joined by his daughter-in-law (Thulin) and three young hitchhikers (Andersson, Bjelfvenstam, Sundquist.) During the journey he has various flashbacks to childhood and reflects back over his life: the disappointments of losing his childhood sweetheart to another; his unhappy marriage; his unhappy but still breathing mother and the ambition and work ethic that has left him revered, comfortable but alone.
Wild Strawberries was the inspiration for Woody Allen’s last great film, Deconstructing Harry, and going back to the source it’s remarkable how Allen seems to have picked up most of his bad habits as a dramatist from Bergman. The worst of these is to have characters just say exactly what their motivation is and blurt out their existential dilemmas straight to the audience. Wild Strawberries begins with Igor telling the audience about his life, his character and his family situation. Instinctively, you feel that this is something that should be dramatised for us but I suppose it saves time. You can get away with this kind of proselytising more in subtitles, plus Bergman covers himself by making this the old man’s written recollection of events. Him being a man of science his directness is in-character.
The word that leaps to mind thinking back on the film is, pleasant. The performances, the images the story are pleasing. It looks good (aside for a few very obvious painted backdrops) and is winningly performed by a very strong cast. (Max Von Sydow turns up just to pump gas at a petrol station.) I watched it in the afternoon, which is a good time to see it. I wonder if I had been watching it on TV without knowing anything about it whether I’d have pegged it as a masterpiece of cinema. Almost certainly not, but I would’ve watched it to the finish and enjoyed it. It does though have an abrupt non-ending that jolts you out of the film, making you wonder why you bothered.
What are we supposed to be learning from this? Or, more to the point, what is Igor supposed to be learning from all this? He may be a bit of a cold fish but he’s not a bad human being. In a scene where Max Von Sydow fills his tank with petrol and doesn’t charge him because he was such a good doctor, we see that he made a positive contribution to society. If Igor got stuck in a Wonderful Life scenario, it wouldn’t take long for him to be shown the positive contribution his existence has made. We are told Igor is an unreasonable old grump but Sjostrom comes across as a bit of a charmer. In a Hollywood film, he'd be the irascible and outrageous granddad who teaches his uptight offspring (a workaholic lawyer perhaps) to lighten up and enjoy life.
The film is about a cold rational workaholic man who has been punished with loneliness but is being forced to see the error of his ways. Bergman was also a workaholic but also unruly and impulsive. A bit of a shit really. Bergman spawned nine children through five marriages, had numerous affairs and has been accused of emotional cruelty. In return, he spewed out an endless number of gloomy movies and stage productions, some of which were brilliant, but all which were miserable. Who is he to give this doctor a hard time?
Directed by Ingmar Bergman 1957.
Starring Victor Sjostrom, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Bjorn Bjelfvenstam, Folke Sundquist and Jullan Kindahl. Out on blu-ray from the BFI https://shop.bfi.org.uk/ or as part of their Ingmar Bergman: Volume II collection. Black and white. 92 mins.
There will be a review of Bergman’s seminal movie but before we get to that I wanna tell you a story. Like all good stories, it's a story about the good old days. Back in the 80s, there used to be a magical place called The Scala, a repertory cinema in Pentonville Road. It was a beautiful old building in a rough part of town and every day and all night on Saturdays, it showed a wide and wild variety of films. Cult films, classic films, crap films, obscure films, naughty films, popular films, films with Dick Miller in. They published these beautiful monthly programme posters that were works of art and you could just pick them up for free when you were walking past.
Search the internet and you’ll find people windbagging nostalgic about how great it was. Scala nostalgists tend to play up how seedy and debauched it was. And that was definitely part of it: the area to the back of King's Cross was a red-light district and some very odd characters would find their way into the auditorium. But it wasn't all Russ Meyer, John Waters and Thundercrack. My favourite memories were often in the afternoons, where you could get a coffee and a cake and, for no great amount of money, watch a double or triple bill. I saw everything there. I gave up much of my late teens and early twenties to it. I could've made something of myself if it hadn't been for the Scala. (Yeah, right.) And then in 1993, I went to live abroad for a year and a half and when I came back Bobby Moore had died and the Scala was closed. Warner Bros had sued on Kubrick's instigation after a secret screening of A Clockwork Orange which its director had banned from being shown in this country. (I move away for a year and a half and the whole damn country goes to ruin.)
The Scala, which is now a music venue, was an integral part of my life but we didn't get off to the best of starts. My first trip there was for a Sunday afternoon triple bill of Ingmar Bergman classics. First, there was The Seventh Seal. Awful. Then Smiles On a Summer Night, more awful. And finally this, boring. All the way through, I kept wondering what the hell was in these black and white films that equated masterpiece. The Seventh Seal still looks like baloney to me but, some thirty-five years on, I have seized the opportunity offered by this BFI release to revisit the last film on that afternoon, and I think we have reached an understanding.
Wild Strawberries is a day in the life of an aged physician Igor (Sjostrom), travelling by car to pick up a prestigious award. He is joined by his daughter-in-law (Thulin) and three young hitchhikers (Andersson, Bjelfvenstam, Sundquist.) During the journey he has various flashbacks to childhood and reflects back over his life: the disappointments of losing his childhood sweetheart to another; his unhappy marriage; his unhappy but still breathing mother and the ambition and work ethic that has left him revered, comfortable but alone.
Wild Strawberries was the inspiration for Woody Allen’s last great film, Deconstructing Harry, and going back to the source it’s remarkable how Allen seems to have picked up most of his bad habits as a dramatist from Bergman. The worst of these is to have characters just say exactly what their motivation is and blurt out their existential dilemmas straight to the audience. Wild Strawberries begins with Igor telling the audience about his life, his character and his family situation. Instinctively, you feel that this is something that should be dramatised for us but I suppose it saves time. You can get away with this kind of proselytising more in subtitles, plus Bergman covers himself by making this the old man’s written recollection of events. Him being a man of science his directness is in-character.
The word that leaps to mind thinking back on the film is, pleasant. The performances, the images the story are pleasing. It looks good (aside for a few very obvious painted backdrops) and is winningly performed by a very strong cast. (Max Von Sydow turns up just to pump gas at a petrol station.) I watched it in the afternoon, which is a good time to see it. I wonder if I had been watching it on TV without knowing anything about it whether I’d have pegged it as a masterpiece of cinema. Almost certainly not, but I would’ve watched it to the finish and enjoyed it. It does though have an abrupt non-ending that jolts you out of the film, making you wonder why you bothered.
What are we supposed to be learning from this? Or, more to the point, what is Igor supposed to be learning from all this? He may be a bit of a cold fish but he’s not a bad human being. In a scene where Max Von Sydow fills his tank with petrol and doesn’t charge him because he was such a good doctor, we see that he made a positive contribution to society. If Igor got stuck in a Wonderful Life scenario, it wouldn’t take long for him to be shown the positive contribution his existence has made. We are told Igor is an unreasonable old grump but Sjostrom comes across as a bit of a charmer. In a Hollywood film, he'd be the irascible and outrageous granddad who teaches his uptight offspring (a workaholic lawyer perhaps) to lighten up and enjoy life.
The film is about a cold rational workaholic man who has been punished with loneliness but is being forced to see the error of his ways. Bergman was also a workaholic but also unruly and impulsive. A bit of a shit really. Bergman spawned nine children through five marriages, had numerous affairs and has been accused of emotional cruelty. In return, he spewed out an endless number of gloomy movies and stage productions, some of which were brilliant, but all which were miserable. Who is he to give this doctor a hard time?
