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I want to begin by thanking Dr. Greenberg for his very interesting presentation and analysis of this film, and for the opportunity to discuss it this evening. Although he and I have apparently been teaching at the same institution for a number of years, we had never met until tonight. I mention this, not to disavow a conspiracy, but to contrast our urbanized and isolated times with the world of Wild Strawberries. For, although Bergman was later to make films in which the total world structure appears to be disintegrating, this film, made in 1957, is still old-fashioned both in concept and expression.
For example, Miss Agda, Isak's faithful housekeeper, has been in his service for forty years; he himself is being honored as a fifty-year Jubilee Doctor; his son has become not a hippie, but a doctor at the same venerable institution; the young hitchhikers whom he picks up listen to him with respect for his age, while they themselves are planning their careers as doctor or clergyman or wife, a future which to them still appears eminently conceivable.
In short, there is a past, present and future that forms an uninterrupted life cycle within which something seems to have gone awry for a particular individual and his family. In some way they seem to have gotten unhooked from the life process and the cycle of generations and they must, in the film, become aware of this and find their way back in again.
For although the story is ostensibly about one lonely old man facing death, Dr. Greenberg has made it clear that the other protagonists represent different times and different aspects of Isak's life. Young Sarah and her two boyfriends, cousin Sarah and her two suitors, Isak's wife and her two lovers are all reflections of the same schema.
The relationship between the son Evald and his unborn child mirrors the relationship between Isak and his son Evald and ultimately the relationship between the un-named father and Isak, who must be re-born.
We are dealing with a world of strange