Landmark: Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2018
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet discusses Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries with the writer Colm Toibin, the film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and the Swedish Cultural Attaché Ellen Wettmark.
Released in 1957 and inspired by Bergman's own memories of childhood holidays in a summerhouse in the north of Sweden, Wild Strawberries tells the story of elderly professor Isak Borg, who travels from his home in Stockholm to receive an honorary doctorate. On the way, he's visited by childhood memories. The film stars veteran actor and director Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin.
With additional contributions from the film historian Kevin Brownlow and Jan Holmberg from the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers Bergman's archives.
The BFI in London is running a season of Ingmar Bergman films until March 1st 2018 as part of the global celebrations of the centenary of world-renowned Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007).
A Matter of Life and Death: the Films of Ingmar Bergman has been republished with a new introduction by Geoff Andrew of the BFI.
Wild Strawberries is being screened on 26 Feb, Newlyn Filmhouse; 8 March, Borderlines Film Festival; 11 March, Chapter Arts Centre.
This programme was originally recorded in December 2015.
Producer: Laura Thomas
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
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| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Thanks for downloading the Arts and Ideas podcast from the Free Thinking Team at BBC Radio 3. |
| 0:38.2 | My name's Matthew Sweet |
| 0:39.2 | and the next 45 minutes belong |
| 0:41.3 | to Ingmar Bergman, the great |
| 0:43.3 | Swedish director, whose centenary |
| 0:45.3 | falls this year. To mark that, |
| 0:47.5 | here's another chance to hear a program |
| 0:49.2 | we recorded last year on his film |
| 0:51.4 | Wild Strawberries. |
| 0:53.7 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:59.1 | 1957 was Ingmar Bergman's most miserable, most successful year. |
| 1:04.2 | It was the year the public saw the chess game he'd arranged between Max von Siddow and |
| 1:09.2 | Death, one of the most resonant images in all cinema. |
| 1:12.6 | The year he directed a landmark stage production of Pierre Gint and Sweden's first television |
| 1:18.2 | play. It was the year his third marriage collapsed and exhaustion or something sadder put him |
| 1:24.1 | in hospital. It was also the year that he made what's regarded by many as his greatest film. |
| 1:29.4 | Wild Strawberries, a picture that starts as a comic road movie |
| 1:33.6 | about a vain old academic driving to his alma mater to accept an honour, |
| 1:38.8 | but which soon veers off into more mysterious territory. |
... |
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