Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) (1957)

Wild Strawberries is the quintessential Bergman film, touches on most of his favorite themes and becomes more rewarding and profound upon further viewings as one gets older. It's an intellectual, less schmaltzy European version of 'It's a Wonderful Life'.

The film is the odyssey of a rather cold, cerebral and elderly highly respected professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) as he goes on the road with his sensitive and prickly daughter in law to receive an out of town honor. Along the way, they visit Borg's even older and even colder 90 something mother.

Don't give up. The film initially seems to meander aimlessly. Numerous apparently unrelated events unfold, including a submersion into Borg's past memories, picking up a trio of young and naive hitchhikers, the rather prickly exchanges with the mother, an encounter with a bitter and unpleasant middle aged couple that have had a car crash, and various dark revelations by Marianne the daughter in law about her teetering marriage to Borg's difficult son, who has inherited his father's cold and isolating tendencies.

By the end, the film presents a unified whole of a man coming to terms with his life and taking down the high walls from others with which he has isolated himself. He forgives himself for his choices and his treatment of others, and is able to not only reconcile but express love for his pregnant daughter in law, the sensual and expressive Marianne, played by iconic Swedish beauty Ingrid Thulin. Look also for Bergman's favorite screen performer Max Von Sydow in a cameo performance as a small town gas station owner who reminds Borg of the good he has done in his life. He shows some range as he is convincing as a simple goodhearted working man, a contrast from his usual high minded, tortured intellectual characters.

The crisp and gorgeous black and white photography of Bergman's early collaborator Gunnar Fischer presents the story not in gritty documentary style, but in picturesque, highly contrasting stylized compositions. This is appropriate to the memories and elegiac retrospective of Borg's life. Rarely cited as a Bergman favorite due to it's rambling nature, quiet introspection and the subtlety of its revelations, it may be his best film. It's certainly his gentlest.