#Birgitta Valberg

[fieldcinema]

Jungfrukällan, 1960 Dir. Ingmar Bergman

[byneddiedingo]

Brigitta Petterson in The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

Cast: Max von Sydow, Brigitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Brigitta Petterson, Axel Düberg, Tor Isedal, Allan Edwall, Ove Porath, Axel Slangus, Gudrun Brost, Oscar Ljung. Screenplay: Ulla Isaksson. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erik Nordgren. 

The Virgin Spring was probably the first Bergman film I ever saw, and it made a powerful impression that stuck with me. I think that's one reason why I have mixed feelings about it today. I remembered it as a simple tale based on a 13th-century Swedish ballad, in which a young girl on her way to church is raped and murdered, but from the ground where the crime took place, a spring of fresh water erupts miraculously. But watching it today I see a more complex story, full of moral ambiguities. The girl, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), is not such a paragon as I remembered: She is spoiled and prideful, trying to sleep late and avoid the task of taking the candles to the church. She may not even be as innocent as she is thought to be: The servant, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), who accompanies her says the reason she wants to sleep late is that she was out the previous night flirting with a boy. Karin's mother, Märeta (Birgitta Valberg), is on the one hand a religious fanatic given to self-torture, and on the other an indulgent parent unwilling to discipline her daughter. Karin's father, Töre (Max von Sydow), is divided between the Christian faith he has adopted and a furious desire to wreak revenge on the rapist-murderers. After he has killed the two men and the boy who accompanied them, he expresses remorse but also blames God for his daughter's fate. He vows to build a church on the site, and the spring gushes forth, but as a miracle it seems like a somewhat anticlimactic response to the horror that has gone before. (It's not like the site, where running water is copious, even needs another spring.) Bergman for once is working from a screenplay he didn't write: It's by Ulla Isaksson, which may be why the film is poised so ambiguously between Christian affirmation and Bergman's usual bleak alienation. It is, however, one of Bergman's most beautifully accomplished films, joining him with the cinematographer Sven Nykvist, with whom he had worked only once before (seven years earlier on Sawdust and Tinsel), and with whom he would form one of the great working partnerships in film history. In its evocation of medieval narrative and meticulous re-creation of a milieu (the production designer is P.A. Lundgren), it's superb. But as a film from one of the great modern directors it seems oddly anachronistic and insincere.

[whosthatknocking]

Jungfrukällan | The Virgin Spring (1960), dir. Ingmar Bergman

[letterboxd-loggd]

Port of Call (Hamnstad) (1948) Ingmar Bergman

March 20th 2022

[nickged]

Virgin Spring (1960), directed by Ingmar Bergman

[ozu-teapot]

Hamnstad (AKA Port Of Call) | Ingmar Bergman | 1948

Hans Strååt, Nine-Christine Jönsson, Birgitta Valberg

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2018:

49. Skammen/Shame (1968) - Dir. Ingmar Bergman

[genevieveetguy]

I can tolerate my wife's infidelity, but if anyone touches my mistress, I become a tiger.

Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende),  Ingmar Bergman (1955)

[film-book]

#Bluray Review: THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960): A Study of Vengeance and a Father’s Grief http://filmbk.me/QdJMNK

[dderdan]

Jungfrukällan, The Virgin Spring, 1960

[whosthatknocking]

Jungfrukällan | The Virgin Spring (1960), dir. Ingmar Bergman

[frankenpagie]

4.29.19

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Max von Sydow, Tor Isedal, Ove Porath, Axel Düberg, Birgitta Valberg

[artfilmfan]

The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

cinematography: Sven Nykvist

[dweemeister]

I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency.

Born Carl Adolf von Sydow, Swedish actor Max von Sydow passed away yesterday at his home in southern France. With a career spanning eight decades, the towering and lanky von Sydow distinguished himself in Hollywood, usually seen playing villains through the 1970s and ‘80s. But he was perhaps most widely acclaimed for his work in Swedish films with directors Ingmar Bergman and Jan Troell – the former, shortly before his death in 2007, described the actor thusly: “Max, you have been the first and the best Stradivarius that I have ever had in my hands.” The role that catapulted von Sydow to international fame was as Antonius Block, a returning Crusader who plays chess with Death (often parodied and referenced), in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. In recent years, von Sydow described himself as an actor without a home nation, in due part due to his globetrotting film career and his sons attending American universities. 

An actor of incredible gravitas and often embodying existential angst and resolve simultaneously, von Sydow fulfilled a lifelong passion that began when he saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a schoolboy in his hometown of Lund. Younger viewers and gamers may know him best as Three-eyed Raven from Game of Thrones and the voice actor of Esbern in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, respectively. In life, one of the greatest screen actors of the last century touched audiences in countless ways that few non-Americans and non-British actors could, no matter the project.

Nine of the films Max von Sydow appeared in are shown above, and are listed below (left-right, descending):

The Virgin Spring (1960, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, and Birgitta Pettersson

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – directed by George Stevens; also starring Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, José Ferrer, and Telly Savalas

Hour of the Wolf (1968, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Liv Ullmann, Gertrud Fridh, Georg Rydeberg, Erland Josephson, and Ingrid Thulin

The Emigrants (1971, Sweden) – directed by Jan Troell; also starring Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, and Monica Zetterlund

The Exorcist (1973) – directed by William Friedkin; also starring Ellen Burstyn, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, and Linda Blair

Pelle the Conqueror (1987, Denmark/Sweden) – directed by Bille August; also starring Pelle Hvenegaard, Erik Paaske, and Bjørn Granath

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, France) – directed by Julian Schnabel; also starring Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, and Anne Consigny

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) – directed by J.J. Abrams; also starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac

The Seventh Seal (1957, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Inga Landgré, and Åke Fridell