Along the way, they pick up a bickering couple and three hitchhikers, including effervescent sprite Sara (Bibi Andersson). Borg also experiences some troubling and beautifully realised dream sequences, as well as flashbacks evoked by a visit to the country house of his youth. Through these, we learn of Borg's awareness of his imminent demise and his underlying regret that his personal relationships have always been distant and reserved, especially with his wife and son. With his magnificently aged and infinitely expressive emotional range borne of his years as a silent movie actor, Sjostrom superbly conveys a dawning sense of remorse and self-realisation. However, the performance is almost too good. The central accusation of the film-that the doctor is "utterly cold"-hardly squares with what we see of him on screen. We just have to take Bergman's word for the doctor's past aloofness. Wild Strawberries is so overpoweringly rich and ruminative a film, however, that what should be a major flaw is reduced to a barely visible crack. On the DVD: the text-only extras are notes from Bergman's own memoir, in which he discusses his own estrangement from his parents (the autobiographical inspiration for Wild Strawberries) while critic Geoff Andrews' additional comments are helpful. He hails the film as "one of the first great road movies". -David Stubbs.

First things first: All the bonus material from the earlier disc is there. That includes the Angela Lansbury-hosted documentary The Making of a Movie Classic, which is worth the price of the DVD alone; then there are the outtakes and deleted scenes, including Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" reprise and the home-movie recording of "The Jitterbug"; the sketches and stills and composer Harold Arlen's home movies; the audio underscores and radio programs; the 1979 interviews with Margaret Hamilton, Ray Bolger, and Jack Haley; and other items too numerous to mention. (Some text introductions to the features have been replaced by narration by Lansbury. ) Brand new to this edition is a sharp restoration using Warner's Ultra Resolution process and an accompanying featurette on how it's done. The technicians also discuss how the sound was remixed, though that would have been more effective had it included surround-sound demonstrations. Other features on the new set include a commentary track by critic John Fricke supplemented by vintage cast interviews (he offers a lot of trivia, and debunks the myth that Shirley Temple was ever close to getting the Dorothy role); profiles of nine cast members and clips of other movies they appeared in (including Toto); a lightly animated 10-minute storybook again narrated by Lansbury; 2001 and 2005 behind-the-scenes featurettes; and a 1950 Lux Radio Theater broadcast. The old 1999 disc also included one-minute excerpts of three early treatments of The Wizard of Oz. The third disc of this new three-disc collector's edition includes the complete versions of those treatments and more. They are four silent films: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910, 13 min. ), The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914, 38 min. ), His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914, 59 min. , written and directed by Baum himself), The Wizard of Oz (1925, 72 min. , Larry Semon). The fifth treatment is Ted Eshbaum's 1933 Technicolor cartoon short which has songs and sound, and is the first depiction of Kansas in black and white and Oz in colour. The third disc also has a 38-minute biography of L. Frank Baum and collector's-edition supplements include a gorgeous set of photo cards among other materials. This is a gloriously comprehensive addition to anyone's classic DVD collection. -David Horiuchi.