Ingmar Bergman's road trip - an old professor is going to accept an award and in doing so meets people who sheds light on his life, and flashes back to important incidents. He has quite a large car which can fit several people - his pregnant daughter in law, some kids who are hitchhiking, a squabbling couple whose car he hits.
This has a great archetypal idea - reflecting on your life while being honoured. I think a lot of viewers would watch this and daydream "I wonder what I would think looking back at this time". I know I did.
The professor has nightmares, less stressful dreams, remembers a childhood home and falling in love. A lot of this was surprisingly broad: comedy at a family dinner, including gags
involving twins and a paterfamilias with an enormous mustache; the young hitchhikers feel more like caricatures of young people than real characters (they don't compare well with the young people in love in Bergman's earlier movies). Ingrid Thulin is very pretty but I wouldn't rank her efforts with the great Bergman female performances.
However Victor Sjostrom is superb as the professor (what a great face) and there are some incredible bits such as the dream sequences, the devastating chat between the unhappily married couple, Thulin's matter of fact treatment of her life. Many memorable images too. Woody Allen has clearly plundered it several times.
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