The Virgin Spring (1960)

Once more I succumb to reviewing one of the most prized DVDs in my film collection. Jungfrukällan (original Swedish title) is based on a medieval fable about a girl who is raped and murdered by three herdsmen in the wilderness. Now this might sound like a B-grade thriller or even a disused porno-with-a-plot but be very surprised because what you get is actually a brilliantly woven composition of revenge, faith, purity, reconciliation, piety, evil, guilt, sin and madness. This film which is heavy on character study has inspired Wes Craven's Last House On The Left (1972) apparently but being controversially violent does not always equal being successful. Bergman on the other hand, won his first Academy Award for this masterpiece.

SYNOPSIS: In 14th century Sweden one late afternoon, a beautiful virgin daughter sets out to bring candle offerings to the church only to be brutally raped and murdered by three goat-herders in the woods after her jealous half-sister partakes in an evil pagan spell. In a maze of poetic justice, soon the bandit trio unknowingly ends up seeking shelter from the family of the very girl they wronged. Upon discovery of their heinous crime when they offered up the dead girl's garments for sale, the chilling events that follow would disturb even the most desensitised movie-goer, as everyone in the tale struggles to come to terms with what must be done.

CAST: To single out one actor would be to do injustice to the rest of the superb cast. As ever, Bergman uses actors with faces that can hold the audience in those prolonged close-up shots to convey intensity of emotion. A young Max von Sydow plays the enraged father to perfection with all the poise of calculated madness. Birgitta Petterson is charming as the virginal victim but I find true precision in the acting of the dark-haired sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), who portrayed the burdensome guilt of sin very, very emphatically in just one single scene. The youngest boy from the criminal trio (Ove Porath) deserves special mention as well with such an unbelievably innocent countenance to him.

MOST MEMORABLE LINE: There are plenty but one which particularly haunts me still is when an old man in the stable was talking to the boy, tormenting him with psychological terror- "See the smoke trembling under the roof as if with fright? Yet when it gets out in the air, it has the whole sky to swirl about in. But it doesn't know that, so it huddles and trembles in the soot under the roof. It's the same with people. They quiver like a leaf in the storm, afraid of what they know and what they don't know." You can bet the boy was scared out of his wits as he trembled with guilt.

BEST SCENE: I am tempted to think that it is the part where the father hacks down a tree with such furious gusto in a display of what must be some kind of medieval ritual or perhaps maybe just an act of excruciating frustration. However the most satisfying scene must be the ending of course, where all the loose ends are tied up and each character receives their just desserts. You will also understand the significance of the title. To say more would spoil it for you but if you need help in interpreting that closing scene, the DVD extras are ever so helpful.

DVD EXTRAS: As ever with Tartan Region 0 Bergman DVDs, we get some sort of lengthy letter or production note from the great man himself, detailing the significance of the movie to himself. The rest of the stuff like film stills and other Bergman trailers are only peripheral to the average viewer. What I did find out from the extras on this DVD though, is that Bergman was angry and dismissive at his own work in The Virgin Spring and rubbished it as a cheap imitation of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. It is said that the matter was finally put to rest when on his 80th birthday, the Japanese virtuoso himself congratulated Bergman for his work in The Virgin Spring and said that he enjoyed it very much.

IMDB RATING: 7.5/10
MY RATING: 9/10

VERDICT: A truly moving film that can unmask the soul. The question is only whether you're ready and also whether you're patient enough. This DVD is now less than a tenner on eBay and I recommend this to anybody who has not been initiated to the sublime works of Ingmar Bergman. Not only is this one of his simpler films (I'm still trying to understand the significance of The Rite after two years) but one of his most powerful as well, so this would be a good place to start. Now get ready to be disturbed.

ciao.

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Word Of The Wolf today is introspection \in-truh-SPEK-shuhn\,

noun:
The act or process of self-examination; contemplation of one's own thoughts and feelings; a looking inward.

"In a painful moment of intense introspection, the young boy watches behind a tree log as his two older accomplices ravishes the innocent virgin."
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Introspection derives from the past participle of Latin introspicere, "to look inside," from intro-, "to the inside" + specere, "to look."