Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries from 1957 is sometimes considered to be film’s original road movie. We follow the 78-year-old professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström). He will travel by car from Stockholm to Lund, where he will receive an honorary doctorate. He has his daughter-in-law Mariann (Ingrid Thulin) with him. The interesting part of the journey is not the nature and the landscape, or what happens during the drive itself. Instead, we get to see in pictures how the trip triggers memories and thoughts from Borg’s long life. “It’s as if I would like to tell myself something that I don’t want to hear when I’m awake… that I’m dead even though I’m alive,” he says when he wakes up after yet another of the image journey dreams, in which he remembers his long-dead wife. It is the journey in Isak’s heart that is the real journey. Isak closes off the outside world and disappears into childhood and the events that shaped his life. Few films contain as many unforgettable scenes as Wild Strawberries, one of Bergman’s most ingenious dramas.

The film was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

– Stig Eriksson