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Drama

Wild Strawberries

Smultronstället

Durée
92 minCriterion 92-minute presentation Sources des versions ↓

Wild Strawberries follows Professor Isak Borg on a drive from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary degree. Along the way, dreams, memories and encounters disturb his settled view of his life. The outward journey is simple; the harder question is how a respected man became so distant from the people around him.

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Langue
Swedish
GentleStrangeBeautiful Idéal pour commencer · Modéré Drama

Édité par Monocurator

Wild Strawberries: Momo carries berries beside a giant open watch framing a Swedish lakeside landscape.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

Histoire et personnages

Who are Isak, Marianne and Evald?

Victor Sjöström plays Isak Borg, the professor at the centre of the journey. Ingrid Thulin is Marianne, his daughter-in-law; Gunnar Björnstrand is Evald, his son and Marianne's husband. Keep those family relationships in mind when their conversations turn from public achievement to private hurt.

Why does Sara appear twice?

Bibi Andersson plays two different people named Sara: Isak's cousin in scenes of his youth, and a young hitchhiker in the present-day journey. The shared actor and name connect the two periods, but the women are separate characters. Notice whether you are at the old family home or back on the road before deciding which Sara you are watching.

How do you follow the dreams and memories?

Use the road journey as your present-day reference point. When the film enters a dream or childhood scene, ask what changes in Isak's view of himself rather than forcing every image into a single explanation. Watch for the difference between being honoured for a life's work and being understood by another person.

Story and cast sources: Criterion film record · Ingmar Bergman Foundation · Criterion essay by Mark Le Fanu (discusses the ending)

Wild Strawberries: dreams and ending explained

Isak’s dreams bring his old age into contact with the people and places of his youth. Watch what each encounter makes him face: time, his own appearance, and the distance he has kept between himself and other people.

Why is the clock missing its hands?

In the opening nightmare, an ordinary object can no longer tell Isak where he stands in time. The funeral imagery makes that loss unsettling. Read together, they suggest a man who can measure a successful career but cannot control the time left to him. The Bergman Foundation also traces the handless clock to Victor Sjöström’s Karin Ingmarsdotter, and the funeral carriage to The Phantom Carriage. The images carry a piece of cinema history as well as Isak’s fear.

Why does Sara hold up a mirror?

Isak sees his aged face while Sara belongs to his youth. The scene puts two ages of his life in the same encounter. The dream gives him no comfortable escape: he has to see the distance between the boy he remembers and the man he has become.

What does the ending mean? Ending spoilers

Sara leads Isak to a view of his parents across the water. They turn and wave. After the day’s strained conversations and small reconciliations, the final dream offers a gentler way to inhabit memory. Mark Le Fanu’s Criterion essay follows those reconciliations into this closing image.

To me, the change from the opening nightmare is the key. At the start, time and death confront Isak as threats; at the end, the people he longs for acknowledge him. The past has stopped approaching him only as an accusation. He cannot recover his childhood, but he can find warmth in it. The scene works as an emotional arrival without making the road journey unreal or treating it as a revelation that Isak has died.

À quoi s’attendre

Ingmar Bergman joins lucid road-movie encounters to dream images that make regret physically present. Victor Sjöström’s quiet performance gives the film warmth without softening its examination of pride and emotional distance.

Comment aborder le film

Treat the journey as the spine and the dreams as emotional evidence, not puzzles with one solution. The film becomes gentler as Isak begins to listen rather than judge.

À savoir

Une brève note non exhaustive Includes nightmares, death imagery, marital cruelty, family conflict, and discussion of ageing and mortality.
Momo's Note Peut contenir des révélations sur l’intrigue Qui est Momo ? → (S’ouvre en anglais)
Ouvrir la note ↓ Fermer la note ↑

At first I felt Isak's coldness and kept my distance too. But as we moved through his dreams and memories, it seemed as if a man who had spent years pushing people away was finally catching up with his own loneliness. Perhaps we cannot redo the past, but if the past begins to look different, we may still change a little.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Générique et versions

Générique
Distribution
Victor Sjöström — Professor Isak Borg · Bibi Andersson — Sara (Isak's cousin) / Sara (the hitchhiker) · Ingrid Thulin — Marianne Borg · Gunnar Björnstrand — Evald Borg
Scénario
Ingmar Bergman
Production
Svensk Filmindustri

Carte des versions

Criterion 92-minute presentation 92 min 92 minutes is attached only to this named source presentation; no restoration, score, territory, cut, frame rate, or source element is inferred. The Swedish Film Institute record previously consulted listed 91 minutes; the selected 92-minute value belongs only to the current Criterion presentation. Source : The Criterion Collection — Wild Strawberries Référence pour la durée · Vérifié le 2026-08-16

Sources des données

Pour poursuivre la découverte

Envie d’un prochain film plus doux, plus court ou plus étrange ? Demandez à Momo un film dans le même esprit → (S’ouvre en anglais)
Momo est de service. Visiter Momo Cinema → (S’ouvre en anglais)

D’autres films de 1957 → (S’ouvre en anglais) D’autres films de Ingmar Bergman → (S’ouvre en anglais)
Pour aller plus loinFive Black-and-White Films for a Difficult Night → (S’ouvre en anglais) Journal

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