Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 24, No. 12. 1961.
[introduction]
When "Time" magazine devoted its cover and a lengthy article to the biography and work of Ingmar Bergman in March last year it was a belated recognition of Sweden's enfant terrible as a figure in world cinema. Arthur Everard, our contributing editor, now discusses Bergman's films with particular reference to "Wild Strawberries," recently screened in Wellington.
The first mention we heard of Bergman's name was as the scriptwriter of Hets ( Frenzy), a film directed by Alf Sjoberg in 1944. frenzy was highly regarded at the time of its release, but seen in perspective now it emerges as not much more than a fairly competent exercise in the story about adolescent love and its destruction by a sadistic schoolmaster and lack of adult understanding. How much of the lack of tension was due to script and how much to direction is not obvious, but certainly there was nothing in the script to stamp it distinctively as Ingmar Bergman's. The scenes of the schoolmaster Caligula's cat and mouse torture in the classroom were beautifully done, and the overwhelming air of melancholy and hopeless adolescent love permeating the story created a tragic atmosphere.
Sjoberg made the film a specific protest against authoritarianism and, more important within the context of the times, a protest against totalitarianism. The film was a warning to neutral Sweden about the Nazis, but little of this can be found in the film today unless one has the knowledge of hindsight. Generally, the film is somewhat better than an average commercial product, but of no real lasting interest.