Movie Melting Pot…’The Virgin Spring’ (Sweden, 1960)

Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 films, ‘The Virgin Spring’, or ‘Jungfrukallan’, as it is known in its native language, is an emotionally powerful film about loss, revenge, and redemption in the eyes of God. The themes wrestled with here are as dominant and as stark as the incredible black and white imagery that goes with the story. Bergman’s career is an ocean, and ‘The Virgin Spring’ is but one drop of water, a drop that typically gets lost amidst his other, more notable, films like ‘The Seventh Seal’ and ‘Cries and Whispers’.

Like those other films, the central theme of ‘The Virgin Spring’ is mortality and how one deals with death, either of themselves or of their loved ones. Despite this central theme, ‘The Virgin Spring’ is not your typical Bergman film. For one, it was not filmed from a screenplay written by Bergman. Screenwriting duties fell to Ulla Isaksson, who wrote ‘Brink of Life’ for Bergman two years prior. He based the screenplay on the thirteenth-century, Swedish legend, “Tores dotter I Wange†.

The story, set in medieval Sweden, tells of a Christian farmer (Max Von Sydow) whose daughter (Birgitta Pettersson) is raped and murdered by a group of herdsmen on her way to church. The herdsmen then, unknowingly, seek shelter at the farm. Soon after, the farmer and his wife (Bergitta Valberg) discover that these were the men responsible for their daughter’s disappearance. The father, torn between his rage at the men who killed his daughter and the responsibilities he has towards his Christian life, decides to take revenge on the herdsmen.

Another atypical aspect about ‘The Virgin Spring’ is in the cinematography. Up until then, Bergman had regularly collaborated with Gunnar Fischer, but that DP was busy working on a Disney feature. Bergman chose Sven Nykvist as his new cameraman. Bergman had worked with Nykvist previously, but this was the first, full feature Nykvist shot for Bergman, and the results are astounding. The Virgin Spring’ is beautifully shot and perhaps his best usage of framing outside of ‘The Seventh Seal’.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1961. It also won the Golden Globe that year for Best Foreign Language Film. It was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and Marik Vos-Lundh received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.

Upon its release in the United States in 1962, Fort Worth, Texas banned showings due to the disturbing rape scene. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the ban.

The story was later adapted by Wes Craven for his 1972 film, ‘The Last House on the Left’.

‘The Virgin Spring’ is available on a Criterion Collection DVD that includes a high-definition digital transfer, an audio commentary by Bergman scholar Birgitta Steene, video interviews with actresses Gunnel Lindblom and Birgitta Pettersson, an introduction by filmmaker Ang Lee, an audio recording of a 1975 American Film Institute seminar by Bergman, an optional English-dubbed soundtrack, and a new English subtitle translation. The DVD also comes with a 28-page booklet featuring essays by film scholar Peter Cowie and screenwriter Ulla Isaksson, the medieval ballad on which the film is based, and a letter from Bergman on the film’s controversial rape scene.

‘The Virgin Spring’ was released just after ‘The Seventh Seal’ and just before ‘Through a Glass Darkly’. All three are considered masterpieces. Masterpieces or not, this period of time was an integral point in Bergman’s filmmaking life, and ‘The Virgin Spring’, though Bergman, himself, never fully recognized the film as a major achievement, is the center-point of that period. It is an incredibly moving piece of cinema that should be experienced by fans of film of all kinds.