Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Acting
Victor Sjöström's final performance—78 years old and devastating.
Direction
Bergman at his most humane, before the bleakness fully took over.
Cinematography
Dream sequences that invented the visual language of memory.
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Victor Sjöström
Professor Isak Borg
Bibi Andersson
Sara
Ingrid Thulin
Marianne
Gunnar Björnstrand
Evald
Jullan Kindahl
Agda
Folke Sundquist
Anders
Björn Bjelfvenstam
Viktor
Naima Wifstrand
Isak's Mother
Gunnel Broström
Mrs. Alman
Gertrud Fridh
Karin, Isak's Wife
Sif Ruud
Aunt Olga
Gunnar Sjöberg
Alman
Max von Sydow
Åkerman
Åke Fridell
Wife's Lover
Yngve Nordwall
Uncle Aron
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Victor Sjöström was a legendary silent film director who literally invented the flashback technique—Bergman cast his hero and gave him a career-capping role about memory itself.
Bergman wrote this in a hospital after a breakdown, supposedly finishing the script in five days while his mistress Bibi Andersson (who plays Sara) visited him daily.
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