wild strawberries is about an old fella who's been crachety and cold his whole life. he's about to be given a high honour for his 50 years as a doctor and he's beginning to reflect on his life, not liking what he's seeing. he wanders in and out of dreams and reality while travelling to collect his new honour. it's such a beautiful little film. it was made in 1957 when bergman wasn't the oldest of men but he portrays the main character with such...understanding. it's just incredible. there.s a dream sequence where he's walking down a street alone, and it's a long shot and you can see his hands trembling...little details like that just sell the whole thing. visually bergman is like a humble fellini. he has understated flair that you just can't help but admire. great flick. and the transfer is AMAZING. i can only assume hopscotch got the criterion transfer because it's just immaculate.
next up, the silence. two sisters, one is quite a mother, smart and well mannered but physcially frail and quite sick. the other is beautiful, promiscuous and a little dull in the head. the plot centres around how the frail one prays but feels as if god is not answering those prayers, and quesioning why. this film - another bergman - is pretty unusual, almost feels like bergman trying his hand at surrealist thriller. there's a feeling of despair running through it all that you can't avoid. the addition of midgets and an old man who can't seem to speak any languages at all is inspired and creepy. it's not a horror, heck it's not even a thriller...just a really intense drama.
next up, through a glass darkly. the daughter of an aloof author has just been released from a mental health hospital. she is joined by her father, brother and partner by the beach in a house to spend some quality time together. as time goes on, however, she begins to have relapses into her delusional paranoid state and imagines that god is instructing her to do bizzare and suspicious things. this seems to be one of bergman's most mainstream films in terms of the amount of characters and how they're each explored within the story. it's complex but not as much so as winter light (1963) which only has 2 main characters and so can afford much more time to be spent on them. there are some amazing sequences including an above water shipwreck at the end of a rock pier in which the daughter is found midway through one of her mental attacks. as usual, well shot and acted (it won the oscar for best foreign film in 1961). bergman rarely puts a foot wrong.
finally, the virgin spring. the little known source material for the last house on the left (wes craven's 70's directorial debut), chaos (cheap ripoff version of TLHOTL) and obviously the 'reimagining' of TLHOTL put out earlier this year. in medievil times, a father and mother send their youngest virgin daughter to take candles by horseback to their church in the village. their older daughter who is pregnant dislikes her sister and decides to put a curse on her via odin (a pagan god). as the youngest is travelling she happens upon three herdsmen (two men and a boy) who are acting pretty downright creepy. as she is so innocent she is friendly and polite to them, however she is soon attacked, raped and killed by the two older herdsmen with assistance from the boy. the sister witnesses all this. her guilt festers, the herdsmen steal all the virgin's posessions and set off. they happen across the father and mother's house and ask to stay the night...
this film is hard to watch. it's hard to make such an old period work onscreen because it was a completely alien time to our own. max von sydow does really well as the father and he is the only actor of note. i believe this also won the foreign film oscar of its' year and it deserved it. it's disturbing, not the kind of flick you sit down to with popcorn, coke and a girl. bergman's camera doesn't flinch in portraying all the toughest part of the story but he is not cold or removed which is probably why you feel this film so much while you're watching it. draining but rewarding.
until tomorrow, bye.
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