What filmmaking techniques does Wild Strawberries use?

CineCode breaks down 3 techniques in Wild Strawberries (1957): Elderly Frame Narrative, Dream Logic Structure and Circular Structure.

Who directed Wild Strawberries?

Ingmar Bergman directed Wild Strawberries, released in 1957. CineCode also covers The Seventh Seal (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968).

What films are similar to Wild Strawberries?

Films that share techniques with Wild Strawberries include Cinema Paradiso (1988), 8½ (1963), Synecdoche, New York (2008), City of Women (1980).

Drama

Wild Strawberries

Ingmar Bergman, 1957

An elderly professor drives to receive an honorary degree. On the way, dreams, memories and strangers who remind him of his younger self make him face how he failed the people in his life. This is Bergman's easiest film to get into, and I feel like it's also his clearest statement about what a life well lived looks like.

3 Narrative

At a glance

Wild Strawberries is a 1957 drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman. This breakdown covers 3 techniques (3 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Cinema Paradiso uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Elderly Frame Narrative

Framing the story as an old person's memory of events from decades ago. You know from the start how things ended, so even the happy memories carry some grief.

How this film uses it

Isak Borg tells the story as an old man, then rides through a landscape that brings back his youth. Because he is looking back, every flashback feels like a verdict on him. You watch the young Isak already knowing what he became. The old Isak watches too, knowing what he missed. The drama comes from that gap in time.

Where to see it

Isak's opening narration. The old man sets himself up as the judge of his own life before the journey even begins.

Narrative

Dream Logic Structure

Arranging scenes the way a dream moves, where one image leads to the next by feeling or association. Events don't follow normal cause and effect.

How this film uses it

The opening dream has a deserted street and a hearse that loses a wheel and spills a coffin, and the corpse inside is Isak. It runs on Freudian dream logic, where every image stands for a hidden fear. The symbols (the clock with no hands, himself as a corpse) show you his state of mind and tell you nothing about the plot. Bergman slips the dreams in so smoothly that you can't always tell memory from dream, and he means it that way.

Where to see it

The opening nightmare. Isak sees his own corpse in the coffin that slides out of the hearse. The dream tells you what is wrong inside him before the journey begins.

Narrative

Circular Structure

Ending the film where it started, or with a scene that echoes the opening. The repeat shows what has changed, or suggests the cycle will keep going.

How this film uses it

The opening nightmare suggests Isak has lost his peace. The film ends with him finding it again in a memory. The strawberry patch (the wild strawberries of the title, tied to his cousin Sara) shows up at the start as happiness he lost. At the end, it comes back as a memory he has recovered. The film closes where it began, and this time he accepts it.

Where to see it

The final vision of his parents waving from across the water. Isak returns to his childhood, as he did at the start, and this time the day's hard conversations are what bring him there.

Questions

Wild Strawberries: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does Wild Strawberries use?: CineCode breaks down 3 techniques in Wild Strawberries (1957): Elderly Frame Narrative, Dream Logic Structure and Circular Structure.
Who directed Wild Strawberries?: Ingmar Bergman directed Wild Strawberries, released in 1957. CineCode also covers The Seventh Seal (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968).
What films are similar to Wild Strawberries?: Films that share techniques with Wild Strawberries include Cinema Paradiso (1988), 8½ (1963), Synecdoche, New York (2008), City of Women (1980).

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