Product Details

• Actors: Victor Sjöström, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Gunnel Broström, Åke Fridell
• Directors: Ingmar Bergman
• Format: AC-3, Black & White, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Language: Swedish
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: September 9, 2008
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001BEK8EC
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,567 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review

An archetypal Ingmar Bergman film, and one of his best. --David Kehr, CHICAGO READER

Product Description

Weaving a tapestry of memory and dreams, Ingmar Bergman delves into the past of aged professor Isak Borg, en route to receive an award from his alma mater for a life he no longer understands. Following directly on the heels of his international breakthrough The Seventh Seal, the alternately warm and nightmarish Wild Strawberries cemented Bergman as the leading art-house visionary of his era.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master's Masterpiece, March 27, 2009

By 

Old Dog "Expatiation" (The Hill Country, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wild Strawberries: Essential Art House (DVD)

After half a century, WILD STRAWBERRIES yet glimmers in these darkling days. A meditation on old age, selfishness, duty, love, and reconciliation, the film traces the last days of a respected but unloving physician (played by the elderly, frail, great Victor Sjostram, who passed away during the making of the film [in the 1920s he had starred in the daunting silent THE OUTLAW AND HIS WIFE, set in Iceland]). The main character undertakes a journey by car with his daughter-in-law to receive an honorary degree from Alma Mater. On the way he adopts three college students and a snarling, embittered married couple. He visits his very very elderly and very cold mother--and always there are visions of the sorrows, regrets, and bitternesses of his past. At the film's luminescent close the doctor at last casts off ancient recriminations to achieve a peaceful repose lulled by a shimmering scene from long ago with Mother and Father in happy tableau. One of cinema's outstanding achievemnts. But I too am an old man.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting, July 11, 2009

By 

A. Eastwood (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wild Strawberries: Essential Art House (DVD)

Wild Strawberries is an excellent display of the broad spectrum of human emotion. At first glance an immediate disdain is inspired by the main character, until the story unfolds revealing the source of his callousness. By the end I felt nothing but a profound sense of empathy and compassion. Bergman has quickly become one of my favorite directors, and in my opinion, this film is among his best.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Appreciation of This Film Came With Age, September 24, 2009

By 

carol irvin "carol irvin" (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wild Strawberries: Essential Art House (DVD)

When I watched this film when I was young, I did not like it. I thought it was too stark, too melancholy, too dark. When you are young the world is more of a technicolor place and perhaps we are all unwilling to let the dark clouds into it. I resaw this film when I was in my 50s and my reaction was much different. There is a melancholy yet bittersweet quality to this film, almost a dreamlike glide through the corridors of memory and time. For it is an old person who will die sooner, rather than later, who is looking back on his whole life and his memories as well as winding up his life as it exists in the present. Everyone who has made it to an older age will recognize the territory of the film at once as very, very familiar. It is a Swedish professor who we watch on this journey. His relationships in life have been turbulent but not out of the ordinary. It is a beautiful film, one of Bergman's very best and he didn't make any duds.