FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Ingmar Bergman - Wild Strawberries 

When Ingmar Bergman died a few years ago, customers came to the video store for the first time and increasingly asked about his films. Before that Bergman was one of those who lay on the shelf like lead. There's probably so much truth in his films that it's hard to find sympathy? After all, in Bergman's work we saw God floating down as a spider... The film by him I remember again and again is Smultronstället, who even dares to laugh anxiously and reveals an optimistic view of life - as is possible in Bergman's humanism. At the centre is a 76 year old professor named Isak Borg (played by the great old man of Swedish cinema, the director Victor Sjöström). Together with his daughter-in-law he travels from Stockholm to Lund to receive a doctorate. While driving, the old man remembers his past: his lover who married his brother and his own unhappy marriage. Away from his outward success, he feels something distant and lifeless inside. Smultronstället opens with a dream sequence that already belongs to the canon of cinema: A building in Stockholm with sly windows, a clock without hands, an approaching hearse. Borg tries to draw in the outstretched hand of a dead body. There are other expressionist dream images, influenced by Freud, that show the old man how he sees himself. These scenes have been copied so often that it almost seems artificial to deal with them. However, the film is able to arouse so many emotions that something "science" doesn't hurt at all. The embodiment of the professor by Victor Sjöström can only be described as transcendent. Sjöström was Sweden's most important director during the silent film era. He died at the age of 80, not long after the film was finished. Sjöström's work can probably be described as Bergman's greatest influence (Bergman has never seriously sought a modern visual language that is not in the tradition of Swedish models). Bergman himself described the end of his film as follows: Sjöström's face in splendour. It radiates light, as if from another reality. His whole appearance is gentle and sensitive; his gaze is joyful and loving. Much like a riddle. Later, Bergman admitted to having designed the character as a justification for himself in front of his own parents. But Sjöström had made him his own. Nevertheless: Above all the character expresses Borg's forgiveness between children and parents as well as the lost possibilities of youth. Another facet of Smultronstället is the journey across the Swedish country - a world of nature. In a way, it is the beauty of nature that guides Borg. How could life become so stunted, so sterile? Basically, none of the characters in Bergman's film has any idea what happened to her. Borg's mother as an example became hard and mean over time. Borg himself only begins to backfire after his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) speaks openly to him. Smultronstället was always so close to me as a film because he expresses the thoughts of reconciliation and reparation without religious metaphors. By the way, Bergman Film is now often and gladly awarded!