Name	Wild Strawberries
Caption	Original film poster
Director	Ingmar Bergman
Producer	Allan Ekelund
Writer	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Victor SjöströmBibi AnderssonIngrid ThulinGunnar Björnstrand
Music	Erik Nordgren
Cinematography	Gunnar Fischer
Editing	Oscar Rosander
Distributor	AB Svensk Filmindustri
Released	Sweden:26 December 1957United States:22 June 1959
Runtime	91 minutes
Country
Language	SwedishLatin

Wild Strawberries (1957) is a Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, about an old man recalling his past. The original Swedish title is Smultronstället, which literally means "the wild strawberry patch", but idiomatically means an underrated gem of a place (often with personal or sentimental value). The cast includes Victor Sjöström in his final screen performance, as well as Bergman regulars Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnar Björnstrand. Max von Sydow also appears in a small role. Bergman wrote the screenplay while hospitalized. Because it tackles difficult questions about life, and thought-provoking themes such as self-discovery and human existence, the film is often considered to be one of Bergman's most emotional, optimistic and best films.

Plot

Grouchy, stubborn, and egotistical Professor Isak Borg, a 78 year old widower, is an elderly physician. His medical and scientific specialty was bacteriology. Before specializing he served as general practitioner in rural Sweden. He sets out on a long car ride from Stockholm to Lund to receive the honorary degree Doctor Jubilaris 50 years after graduating from Lund University. Borg is accompanied by his pregnant daughter-in-law Marianne, who does not much like her cool father-in-law and is planning to separate from her husband, Evald, Isak's only son.

During the trip, Isak is forced by nightmares, daydreams, his old age, and his impending death to reevaluate his life. He meets a series of hitchhikers, each of whom set off dreams or reveries into Borg's troubled past. The first group consist of two men and a woman – adored by both men – named Sara, who is a double for Isak's love of his youth (and who is played by the same actress). They remained with him throughout his journey. Next they pick up an embittered middle age couple who had just been in an auto accident. The pair exchange such a terrible vitriol and venom that Marianne stops the car and asks them to leave. They remind Isak of his own life and unhappy marriage. He reminisces about his childhood in the seaside, his sweetheart Sara. He is confronted by his loneliness and aloofness, recognizing these traits both in his ancient mother and in his middle age physician son, and gradually advances towards acceptance of himself, his past, his present, and his soon-to-occur death.

Borg finally arrives at his destination and picks up his prize, which proves an empty ritual. That night, he bids a loving good-bye to his young friends, to whom the once bitter old man whispers, "remember me". As he goes to his bed in his son's home, he is overcome by a sense of peace and dreams of a family picnic by a lake. Closure and affirmation of life have finally come, and Borg's face radiates joy.

Cast

Victor Sjöström – Professor Isak Borg

Bibi Andersson – Sara

Ingrid Thulin – Marianne Borg

Gunnar Björnstrand – Evald Borg

Jullan Kindahl – Agda

Folke Sundquist – Anders

Björn Bjelfvenstam – Viktor

Naima Wifstrand – Isak's Mother

Gunnel Broström – Berit Alman

Gertrud Fridh – Karin Borg, Isak's wife

Sif Ruud – Aunt Olga

Gunnar Sjöberg – Sten Alman

Max von Sydow – Henrik Åkerman

Åke Fridell – Karin's lover

Yngve Nordwall – Uncle Aron

Per Sjöstrand – Sigfrid Borg

Gio Petré – Sigbritt Borg

Gunnel Lindblom – Charlotta Borg

Maud Hansson – Angelica Borg

Ann-Marie Wiman – Eva Åkerman

Eva Norée – Anna Borg

Lena Bergman – Kristina Borg, twin

Monica Ehrling – Birgitta Borg, twin

Production

Origins

1957 during production of Wild Strawberries in the studios in Solna.]]

Bergman came up with the idea for the film while driving from Stockholm to Dalarna, stopping in Uppsala where he had been born and raised, and driving by outside his grandmother's old house, when he suddenly began to think about how it would be if he could open the door and inside it would be just as it had been during his childhood. "So it struck me – what if you could make a film about this; that you just walk up in a realistic way and open a door, and then you walk into your childhood, and then you open another door and come back to reality, and then you make a turn around a street corner and arrive in some other period of your existence, and everything goes on, lives. That was actually the idea behind Wild Strawberries". Later he would revise the story of the film's genesis. In Images: My Life in Film he comments on his own earlier statement: "That's a lie. The truth is that I am forever living in my childhood."

Development

Bergman wrote the screenplay of Wild Strawberries in Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital ( the workplace of Isak Borg ) in the late spring of 1957 after being given the green light to proceed by producer Carl Anders Dymling on the basis of a short synopsis. He was in the hospital for two months, being treated for recurrent gastric problems and general stress. Bergman's doctor at Karolinska was his good friend Sture Helander, who invited him to attend his lectures on psychosomatics. Helander was married to Gunnel Lindblom who was to play Isak's sister Charlotta in the film. Bergman was at a high point of his professional career after a triumphant season a the Malmö City Theatre, where he had been artistic director since 1952 and the success of both Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal. However his private life was in disarray; his third marriage was on the rocks; his affair with Bibi Andersson, which had begun in 1954, was coming to an end; his relationship with his parents was, after an attempted reconciliation with his mother, at desperately low ebb.

Casting and preproduction progressed rapidly. The completed screenplay is dated 31 May and shooting took place between 2 July 1957 and 27 August 1957. The scenes at the summer house were filmed in Saltsjöbaden, a fashionable resort in the Stockholm archipelago. Part of the nightmare sequence was shot with predawn summer light in Gamla stan, the old part of central Stockholm. Most of the movie was made at SF’s studio and on its back lot at Råsunda in northern Stockholm.

Casting

The director's immediate choice for the leading role of the old professor was Victor Sjöström, Bergman's silent film idol and early counselor at Svensk Filmindustri, whom he had directed in To Joy eight years earlier. "Victor," Bergman remarked, "was feeling wretched and didn’t want to [do it];... he must have been seventy eight. He was misanthropic and tired and felt old. I had to use all my powers of persuasion to get him to play the part."

In Bergman on Bergman he has stated that he only thought of Sjöström when the screenplay was complete, and that he asked Dymling to contact the famous actor and film director. Yet in Images: My Life in Film he claims that: "It is probably worth noting that I never for a moment thought of Sjöström when I was writing the screenplay. The suggestion came from the film's producer, Carl Anders Dymling. As I recall, I thought long and hard before I agreed to let him have the part."

During the shooting, the health of the 79-year-old Sjöström gave cause for concern. Dymling had persuaded him to take on the role with the words: "All you have to do is lie under a tree, eat wild strawberries and think about your past, so it's nothing too arduous." This was inaccurate and the burden of the film was completely on Sjöström who is in all but one scene of the film. Initially Sjöström had problems with his lines, which made him frustrated and angry. He would go off into a corner and beat his head against the wall in frustration, even to the point of drawing blood and producing bruises. He sometimes quibbled over details in the script. To unburden his revered mentor, Bergman made a pact with Ingrid Thulin that if anything went wrong during a scene, she would take the blame on herself. Things improved when they changed filming times so that Sjöström could get home in time for his customary late afternoon whisky at 4:30. Sjöström got along particularly well with Bibi Andersson.

As usual Bergman chose his collaborators from a team of actors and technicians with whom he had worked before in the cinema and the theater.

As Sara, Bibi Andersson plays both Borg’s childhood sweetheart who left him to marry his brother and a charming, energetic young woman who reminds him of that lost love. Andersson, then twenty two years old, was a member in Bergman's famed repertory company. He gave her a small part in his films Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and as the jester’s wife in The Seventh Seal (1957). She would continue to work for him in many more films most notably in Persona (1966).

Ingrid Thulin plays Marianne, the sad gentle and warm daughter in law of Borg. She appeared among other Bergman’s films in as the mistress in Winter Light (1963) and as one of three sisters in Cries and Whispers (1972). Bergman’s first wife, Else Fisher, made a brief unaccredited appearance as Borgs’s mother in the final flashback; their daughter, Lena, played one of Isak’s twin sisters.

Awards and recognition

The film won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival, "Best Film" and "Best Actor" at the Mar del Plata Film Festival and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1960. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay.

The film is included on the Vatican Best Films List, recommended for its portrayal of a man's "interior journey from pangs of regret and anxiety to a refreshing sense of peace and reconciliation".

The film also influenced Woody Allen’s 1988 drama Another Woman. That film’s main character, Marion Post, is also accused by friends and relatives of being cold and unfeeling, which forces her to reexamine her life. Allen also borrows several tropes from Bergman’s film, such as having Post’s sister-in-law tell her that her brother, Paul, hates her, having a former student tell Post that her class changed her life, and Allen has Post confront the demons of her past via several dream sequences and flashbacks that reveal important information to a viewer, as in Wild Strawberries.

References

External links

Criterion Collection essay by Peter Cowie

Category:1957 films Category:Black-and-white films Category:Films directed by Ingmar Bergman Category:Swedish films Category:Swedish-language films

Category:Art films Category:1950s drama films Category:Golden Bear winners

Name	Ingmar Bergman
Caption	Ingmar Bergman during production of Wild Strawberries (1957).
Birth name	Ernst Ingmar Bergman
Other namess	Buntel Eriksson
Birth date	July 14, 1918
Birth place	Uppsala, Sweden
Death date	July 30, 2007
Death place	Fårö, Sweden
Occupation	Film director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1944–2005
Spouse	Else Fisher (1943–45)Ellen Lundström (1945–50)Gun Grut (1951–59)Käbi Laretei (1959–69)
Awards	Goethe Prize
Influences	August StrindbergVictor SjöströmAkira KurosawaFederico FelliniMarcel Carné

Ernst Ingmar Bergman (; 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential film directors of all time.

He directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote, and directed over one hundred and seventy plays. Among his company of actors were Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in the landscape of Sweden. His major subjects were death, illness, faith, betrayal, and insanity.

Bergman was active for more than six decades. In 1976 his career was seriously threatened as the result of a botched criminal investigation for alleged income tax evasion. Outraged, Bergman suspended a number of pending productions, closed his studios, and went into self-imposed exile in Germany for eight years.

Early life

, pictured at Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm]]

Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden, the son of Erik Bergman, a Lutheran minister and later chaplain to the King of Sweden. He grew up surrounded by religious imagery and discussion. His father was a conservative parish minister with strict parenting concepts. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for "infractions" like wetting the bed. "While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang, or listened", Ingmar wrote in his autobiography Laterna Magica:

"I devoted my interest to the church’s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the colored sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one’s imagination could desire — angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."

Although raised in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman later stated that he lost his faith at age eight, and only came to terms with this fact while making Winter Light. Bergman's interest in theatre and film began early: "At the age of 9, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a battered magic lantern, a possession that altered the course of his life. Within a year, he had created, by playing with this toy, a private world in which he felt completely at home, he recalled. He fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts."

In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the summer vacation with family friends. He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler. He later wrote in Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) about the visit to Germany, describing how the German family had put a portrait of Adolf Hitler on the wall by his bed, and that "for many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats". Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service.

In 1937, he entered Stockholm University College (later renamed Stockholm University), to study art and literature. He spent most of his time involved in student theatre and became a "genuine movie addict". At the same time, a romantic involvement led to a break with his father that lasted for years. Although he did not graduate, he wrote a number of plays, as well as an opera, and became an assistant director at a theater. In 1942, he was given the chance to direct one of his own scripts, Caspar's Death. The play was seen by members of Svensk Filmindustri, which then offered Bergman a position working on scripts. In 1943, he married Else Fisher.

Career

Film work

Bergman's film career began in 1941 with his rewriting of scripts, but his first major accomplishment was in 1944 when he wrote the screenplay for Torment/Frenzy (Hets), a film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Along with writing the screenplay, he was also given position as assistant director to the film. In his second autobiographical work, Images: My Life in Film, Bergman describes the filming of the exteriors as his actual film directorial debut. The international success of this film led to Bergman's first opportunity to direct a year later. During the next ten years, he wrote and directed more than a dozen films including The Devil's Wanton/Prison (Fängelse) in 1949 and The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton) and Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), both from 1953.

Bergman first achieved worldwide success with Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) (1955), which won for "Best poetic humor" and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes the following year. This was followed by The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället), released in Sweden ten months apart in 1957. The Seventh Seal won a special jury prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and Wild Strawberries won numerous awards for Bergman and its star, Victor Sjöström. Bergman continued to be productive for the next two decades. From the early 1960s, he spent much of his life on the Swedish island of Fårö, where he made several films.

In the early 1960s he directed three films that explored the theme of faith and doubt in God, Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en Spegel – 1961), Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna – 1962), and The Silence (Tystnaden – 1963). Critics created the notion that the common themes in these three films represented trilogy or cinematic triptych. Bergman initially responded that he did not plan these three films as a trilogy and that he could not see any common motifs in them, but he later seemed to have adopted the notion, with some equivocation.

In 1966, he directed Persona, a film that he himself considered one of his most important works. While the shockingly experimental film won few awards many consider it his masterpiece. Other notable films of the period include The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan – 1960), Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen – 1968), Shame (Skammen – 1968) and A Passion/The Passion of Anna (En Passion – 1969). Bergman also produced extensively for Swedish television at this time. Two works of note were Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap – 1973) and The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten – 1975).

After his arrest in 1976 for tax evasion, Bergman swore he would never again make films in Sweden. He shut down his film studio on the island of Fårö and went into self-imposed exile. He briefly considered the possibility of working in America and his next film, The Serpent's Egg (1977) was a German-U.S. production and his second English-language film (the first being 1971's "The Touch"). This was followed a year later with a British-Norwegian co-production of Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten – 1978) starring Ingrid Bergman. The one other film he directed was From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten – 1980) a British-German co-production.

In 1982, he temporarily returned to his homeland to direct Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander). Bergman stated that the film would be his last, and that afterwards he would focus on directing theatre. Since then, he wrote several film scripts and directed a number of television specials. As with previous work for TV, some of these productions were later released in theatres. The last such work was Saraband (2003), a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage and directed by Bergman when he was eighty-four years old.

Repertory company

Bergman developed a personal "repertory company" of Swedish actors whom he repeatedly cast in his films, including Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Bengt Ekerot, Anders Ek and Gunnar Björnstrand, each of whom appeared in at least five Bergman features. Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, who appeared in nine of Bergman's films and one televisual film (Saraband), was the last to join this group (in the 1966 film Persona), and ultimately became most closely associated with Bergman, both artistically and personally. They had a daughter together, Linn Ullmann (born 1966).

during the production of Through a Glass Darkly (1960)]] studios north of Stockholm.]]

Bergman began working with Sven Nykvist, his cinematographer, in 1953. The two of them developed and maintained a working relationship of sufficient rapport to allow Bergman not to worry about the composition of a shot until the day before it was filmed. On the morning of the shoot, he would briefly speak to Nykvist about the mood and composition he hoped for, and then leave Nykvist to work lacking interruption or comment until post-production discussion of the next day's work.

Financing

By Bergman's own account, he never had a problem with funding. He cited two reasons for this: one, that he did not live in the United States, which he viewed as obsessed with box-office earnings; and two, that his films tended to be low-budget affairs. (Cries and Whispers, for instance, was finished for about $450,000, while Scenes from a Marriage, a six-episode television feature, cost only $200,000.)

Technique

Bergman usually wrote his own screenplays, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he viewed as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully constructed and are either based on his plays or written in collaboration with other authors. Bergman stated that in his later works, when on occasion his actors would want to do things differently from his own intention, he would let them, noting that the results were often "disastrous" when he did not do so. As his career progressed, Bergman increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his latest films, he wrote just the ideas informing the scene and allowed his actors to determine the exact dialogue. When viewing daily rushes, Bergman stressed the importance of being critical but unemotive, claiming that he asked himself not if the work is great or terrible, but if it is sufficient or if it needs to be reshot. In an interview with Playboy in 1964, he said: "...The manifestation of sex is very important, and particularly to me, for above all, I don't want to make merely intellectual films. I want audiences to feel, to sense my films. This to me is much more important than their understanding them." Film, Bergman said, was his demanding mistress. Several of his actresses became his mistresses, as his life and art merged.

Bergman's views on his career

during the production of The Silence (1963)]] When asked about his films, Bergman said he held Winter Light, Persona, and Cries and Whispers in the highest regard, though in an interview in 2004, Bergman said that he was "depressed" by his own films and could not watch them anymore. In these films, he said, he managed to push the medium to its limit. Bergman stated on numerous occasions (for example in the interview book Bergman on Bergman) that The Silence meant the end of the era in which religious questions were a major concern of his films.

Theatrical work

Although Bergman was universally famous for his contribution to cinema, he was also an active and productive stage director all his life. During his studies at Stockholm University, he became active in its student theatre, where he made a name for himself early on. His first work after graduation was as a trainee-director at a Stockholm theatre. At twenty-six years, he became the youngest theatrical manager in Europe at the Helsingborg City Theatre. He stayed at Helsingborg for three years and then became the director at Gothenburg city theatre from 1946 to 1949.

He became director of the Malmö city theatre in 1953 and remained for seven years. Many of his star actors were people with whom he began working on stage, and a number of people in the "Bergman troupe" of his 1960s films came from Malmö's city theatre (Max von Sydow, for example). He was the director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm from 1960 to 1966 and manager from 1963 to 1966.

After Bergman left Sweden because of the tax evasion incident, he became director of the Residenz Theatre of Munich, Germany (1977–84). He remained active in theatre throughout the 1990s and made his final production on stage with Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 2002. A complete list of Bergman's work in theatre can be found under "Stage Productions and Radio Theatre Credits" at Ingmar Bergman filmography.

Tax evasion charges

On 30 January 1976, while rehearsing August Strindberg's Dance of Death at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, he was arrested by two plainclothes police officers and charged with income tax evasion. The impact of the event on Bergman was devastating. He suffered a nervous break-down as a result of the humiliation and was hospitalized in a state of deep depression.

The investigation was focused on an alleged 1970 transaction of 500,000 Swedish kronor (SEK) between Bergman's Swedish company Cinematograf and its Swiss subsidiary Persona, an entity that was mainly used for the paying of salaries to foreign actors. Bergman dissolved Persona in 1974 after having been notified by the Swedish Central Bank and subsequently reported the income. On 23 March 1976, the special prosecutor Anders Nordenadler dropped the charges against Bergman, saying that the alleged crime had no legal basis, saying it would be like bringing "charges against a person who is stealing his own car". Director General Gösta Ekman, chief of the Swedish Internal Revenue Service, defended the failed investigation, saying that the investigation was dealing with important legal material and that Bergman was treated just like any other suspect. He expressed regret that Bergman had left the country, hoping that Bergman was a "stronger" person now when the investigation had shown that he had not done any wrong.

Even though the charges were dropped, Bergman became disconsolate, fearing he would never again return to directing. Despite pleas by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, high public figures, and leaders of the film industry, he vowed never to work again in Sweden. He closed down his studio on the island of Fårö, suspended two announced film projects, and went into self-imposed exile in Munich, Germany. Harry Schein, director of the Swedish Film Institute, estimated the immediate damage as ten million SEK (kronor) and hundreds of jobs lost.

Return

Although he continued to operate from Munich, by mid-1978 Bergman had overcome some of his bitterness toward the government of Sweden. In July of that year he visited Sweden, celebrating his sixtieth birthday at Fårö, and partly resumed his work as a director at Royal Dramatic Theatre. To honor his return, the Swedish Film Institute launched a new Ingmar Bergman Prize to be awarded annually for excellence in filmmaking.

Still, he remained in Munich until 1984. In one of the last major interviews with Bergman, conducted in 2005 at Fårö Island, Bergman said that despite being active during the exile, he had effectively lost eight years of his professional life.

Bergman retired from film making in December 2003. He had hip surgery in October 2006 and was making a difficult recovery. He died peacefully in his sleep, at his home on Fårö, on 30 July 2007, at the age of eighty-nine, the same day that another renowned film director, Michelangelo Antonioni, also died. He was buried on the island on 18 August 2007 in a private ceremony. A place in the Fårö churchyard was prepared for him under heavy secrecy. Although he was buried on the island of Fårö, his name and date of birth were inscribed under his wife's name on a tomb at Roslagsbro churchyard, Norrtälje Municipality, several years before his death.

On 6 April 2011, the Bank of Sweden announced that Bergman's portrait will feature on the new 200 kronor banknote, beginning in 2014–15.

Awards

Academy Awards

In 1971, Bergman received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards ceremony. Three of his films won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The list of his nominations and awards follows:

Won: Best Foreign Film The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) (1960)

Won: Best Foreign Film Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel) (1961)

Won: Best Foreign Film Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1983)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay, Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay The Virgin Spring (1960)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) (1974)

Nominated: Best Picture, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) (1974)

Nominated: Best Director, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) (1974)

Nominated: Best Director, Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte) (1977)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten) (1979)

Nominated: Best Original Screenplay, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1983)

Nominated: Best Director, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1983)

BAFTA Awards

Nominated: Best Film from any Source, The Magician (Ansiktet) (1960)

Nominated: Best Foreign Film, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1984)

Berlin Film Festival

Won: Golden Bear for Best Film, Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957)

Nominated: Golden Bear for Best Film, Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel) (1961)

Won: OCIC Prize, Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Cesar Awards

Nominated: Best Foreign Film, The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten) (1976)

Nominated: Best Foreign Film, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten) (1979)

Won: Best Foreign Film, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1984)

Nominated: Best European Film, Saraband (2005)

Cannes Film Festival

Won: Best Poetic Humor Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) (1955)

Nominated: Golden Palm Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) (1955)

Won: Jury Special prize The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) (1957)

Nominated: Golden Palm The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) (1957)

Won: Best Director Brink of Life (Nära livet) (1958)

Nominated: Golden Palm Brink of Life (Nära livet) (1958)

Won: Special Mention The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) (1960)

Nominated: Golden Palm The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) (1960)

Won: Technical Grand Prize Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) (1972)

Won: Palm of Palms (1997)

Won: Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (1998) (Special award for his whole works.)

Golden Globe Awards

Won: Best Foreign Film Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1960)

Nominated: Best Director, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) (1984)

Other Awards and honors

Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1961) The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (1995)

Family

.]] Bergman was married five times:

25 March 1943 – 1945, to Else Fisher, choreographer and dancer (divorced). Children:

* Lena Bergman, actress, born 1943.

22 July 1945 – 1950, to Ellen Lundström, choreographer and film director (divorced). Children:

* Eva Bergman, film director, born 1945,

* Jan Bergman, film director (1946–2000), and

* twins Mats and Anna Bergman, both actors and film directors and born in 1948.

1951 – 1959, to Gun Grut, journalist (divorced). Children:

* Ingmar Bergman Jr, airline captain, born 1951.

1959 – 1969, to Käbi Laretei, concert pianist (divorced). Children:

* Daniel Bergman, film director, born 1962.

11 November 1971 – 20 May 1995, to Ingrid von Rosen (maiden name Karlebo) (widowed). Children:

* Maria von Rosen, author, born 1959.

The first four marriages ended in divorce, while the last ended when his wife Ingrid died of stomach cancer in 1995, aged 65. Aside from his marriages, Bergman had romantic relationships with actresses Harriet Andersson (1952–55), Bibi Andersson (1955–59), and Liv Ullmann (1965–70). He was the father of writer Linn Ullmann with actress Liv Ullmann. In all, Bergman had nine children, one of whom predeceased him. Bergman was eventually married to all of the mothers except Liv Ullmann, but his daughter with his last wife, Ingrid von Rosen, was born twelve years before their marriage.

Influence

Many filmmakers have praised Bergman and cited his work as a major influence on their own: Woody Allen referred to Bergman as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera." Robert Altman Pedro Almodóvar Olivier Assayas Francis Ford Coppola stated: "My all-time favorite because he embodies passion, emotion and has warmth" Todd Field stated: "He was our tunnel man building the aqueducts of our cinematic collective unconscious." Krzysztof Kieślowski stated: "This man is one of the few film directors—perhaps the only one in the world—to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus." Stanley Kubrick stated: "I believe Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don't just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them." Ang Lee stated: "For me the filmmaker Bergman is the greatest actor of all..." François Ozon Paul Schrader stated: "I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman. What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director. I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value." Martin Scorsese stated: "I guess I'd put it like this: if you were alive in the 50s and the 60s and of a certain age, a teenager on your way to becoming an adult, and you wanted to make films, I don't see how you couldn't be influenced by Bergman. You would have had to make a conscious effort, and even then, the influence would have snuck through." Steven Spielberg stated: "His love for the cinema almost gives me a guilty conscience." Andrei Tarkovsky André Téchiné

See also

Cinema of Sweden

List of film collaborations

References

Bibliography

Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman. By Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima; Translated by Paul Britten Austin. Simon & Schuster, New York. Swedish edition copyright 1970; English translation 1973.

Filmmakers on filmmaking: the American Film Institute seminars on motion pictures and television (edited by Joseph McBride). Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983.

Images: my life in film, Ingmar Bergman, Translated by Marianne Ruuth. New York, Arcade Pub., 1994, ISBN 1-55970-186-2

The Magic Lantern, Ingmar Bergman, Translated by Joan Tate New York, Viking Press, 1988, ISBN 0-670-81911-5

External links

Ingmar Bergman Face to Face

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation

Ingmar Bergman all posters

Bergmanorama: The magic works of Ingmar Bergman

The Guardian/NFT interview with Liv Ullmann by Shane Danielson, 23 January 2001

Bergman talks of his dreams and demons in rare interview, by Xan Brooks, The Guardian, 12 December 2001

Bergman Week

Regilexikon

DVDBeaver's Director's Chair on Bergman, with links to DVD and Blu-ray comparisons of his major films

;Bibliographies

Ingmar Bergman Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

Ingmar Bergman Site

Collection of interviews with Bergman

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