Ingmar’s passing at 89 today, or was it yesterday, brought to mind again how much I was fascinated by his films. I think my favorite was Wild Strawberries. The clock with no hands, the funeral processions, the waste of hate, the contrast of youth and age, the isolation, the uncanniness, all these are vague memories now but at one time were more intensely felt and remembered. (I should see the movie over again?)

I’m perusing, as I write this, the NYT article this morning, Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89. OK, here’s an excerpt from the article:

In 1957, the same year as “Seventh Seal,” Mr. Bergman also directed “Wild Strawberries,” his acclaimed study of old age. In the film, the 78-year-old Isak Borg (played by the silent-film director and actor Victor Sjostrom), drives through the countryside, stops at his childhood home, relives the memory of his first love and comes to terms with his emotional isolation. “I had created a figure who, on the outside, looked like my father but was me, through and through,” Mr. Bergman has said. “I was then 37, cut off from all human emotions.”

I think I first saw the movie and became fascinated with it in the early 1960’s when I was in my early thirties, but now I’m the same age as Isak Borg in the movie, although I’m certainly not suffering the way he did. It’s interesting that I was so fascinated with it at the time, and perhaps still am.
😕

UPDATE 7/31/2007: Eric Alterman‘s first Bergman film was Wild Strawberries and he has interesting comments on the film here.