Wild Strawberries (1957) on Netflix
Professor Isak Borg, 78, drives from Stockholm to Lund for an honorary degree. His pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne rides along, and the road stirs dreams of his past.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.1/10125,826 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Isak Borg is a widowed physician of 78, stubborn and egotistical, who spent his early career as a country doctor before turning to bacteriology. He sets off by car from Stockholm to Lund, where his old university will award him the degree of Doctor Jubilaris fifty years after his doctorate. His daughter-in-law Marianne comes with him; she is pregnant, and her marriage to his son Evald, also a physician, is unhappy. Evald does not want the child, and Marianne is thinking of leaving him. On the road they are joined by three young hitchhikers headed for Italy, among them a girl named Sara whom both young men adore and who reminds Isak of his first love. As Marianne drives, Isak dozes and dreams of his youth at the family summer house.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wild Strawberries (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Carl Anders Dymling persuaded Victor Sjöström to play Professor Isak Borg by telling him all he had to do was lie under a tree eating wild strawberries; Sjöström is in all but one scene, and trouble with his lines drove him to beat his head against a wall until he drew blood and bruises.
- Wild Strawberries was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay, but Ingmar Bergman refused the nomination, writing to the Academy that the Oscar nomination is "one for the motion picture art humiliating institution".
- Screenwriter Bo Goldman tried to remake Wild Strawberries in 1995 as his directorial debut, with Gregory Peck as the elderly professor and Martin Scorsese producing, but the film was never greenlit.
- Ingmar Bergman wrote the screenplay for Wild Strawberries while a patient at Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital, where he spent two months being treated for recurrent gastric problems and general stress.
- Bergman's idea for the film came on a drive from Stockholm to Dalarna when he stopped in Uppsala, his hometown, and imagined opening the door of his grandmother's house to find everything as it was in his childhood.
- Wild Strawberries influenced Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), Another Woman (1988), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Deconstructing Harry (1997).
