WILD
STRAWBERRIES
a
film by Ingmar Bergman
1957/Sweden/93
minutes
9th
Feb 2014; 5 pm
Perks
Mini theater
5 pm
- Introduction and release of book
‘திரைப்பட மேதைகள்’ (Masters of Cinema)
written
by S.Anand, Konangal.
5.45
pm - Tea break
6. pm
- Screening of ‘Wild Strawberries’
Wild Strawberries is one of Bergman's warmest, and finest films. It
concerns an elderly academic - grouchy, introverted, dried up emotionally - who
makes a journey to collect a university award, and en route relives his past by
means of dreams.
Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) is compiling his
memoirs in preparation for an honorary degree that he is to receive for 50
years of medical practice. After an incomprehensible nightmare, he impulsively
changes his travel plans, and decides to drive to Lund with his
daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). Marianne is separated from his son,
Evald (Gunnar Bjornstrand), but decides to go home and reconcile with him.
The road to Lund is a reluctant path that takes Professor
Borg through his youth: the family's summer cottage, the town he served as a
physician, and his mother's house. He meets a young hitchhiker named Sara (Bibi
Andersson) who reminds him of first love. He rescues a stranded, verbally
abusive husband and his suffering wife, who undoubtedly reflect his cruelty to
his late wife. In the course of their journey, he confronts his past failures,
and reconciles with his life, and mortality.
Victor Sjostrom's magnificent performance carries an
emotional authority that gives Bergman's great movie a warmth and an
accessibility that it might not otherwise have had.Wild Strawberries dramatizes
one man’s remarkable voyage of self-discovery. This richly humane masterpiece,
full of iconic imagery, is a treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema
and one of the films that catapulted Ingmar Bergman to international acclaim.
Ingmar Bergman
Universally regarded as one of the great masters of
modern cinema, Bergman has often concerned himself with spiritual and psychological
conflicts. His work has evolved in distinct stages over four decades, while his
visual style-intense, intimate, complex-has explored the vicissitudes of
passion with a mesmerizing cinematic rhetoric. His prolific output tends to
return to and elaborate on recurrent images, subjects and techniques.
Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, in Uppsala,
Sweden. In 1937 Bergman entered the University of Stockholm, where he became an
active member of the student theatrical group. In 1942, after a brilliant
production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the aspiring director was
appointed to the Swedish Royal Opera. In the years following he divided his
talents equally between stage and film efforts.
In 1945 Bergman directed his first film, Crisis, the
story of an unhappy love affair which ends in suicide. Several films followed
closely, but in 1956 Bergman reached the peak of critical and popular praise
with The Seventh Seal. It was followed by masterpieces like Wild Strawberries,
Persona, Cries and Whispers etc. In addition to film, he directed over 70 plays.
Although apparently not influenced by other filmmakers,
with the possible exception of Carl Dreyer, Bergman himself has had a
wide-ranging influence on a generation of filmmakers. A unique and powerful
presence, his genius has made an extraordinary contribution to the art of the
cinema. He died peacefully in his sleep, at his home on Fårö island, on 30 July
2007, at the age of eighty-nine.
(Source: Internet)
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