#The Virgin Spring

[thelostlisbonsister]

†

[cor-ardens-archive]

The Virgin Spring (1960, Ingmar Bergman)

[60sgroove]

THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960) dir. Ingmar Bergman

At the very moment you think you're doomed, a hand shall grasp you and an arm circle around you, and you will be taken far away...where evil no longer has power over you.

[swordofmoonl1ght]

MAX VON SYDOW IN THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

This takes place in old-timey Sweden.  There are still pagans!  So we’re talking early medieval.  Tore (Max von Sydow) and his wife Mareta are minor lords with a little homestead and a few servants, including Ingeri, who is a pagan and also pregnant.  Their daughter is Karin, a vivacious and flirtatious young woman.  Karin is sent to deliver some candles to the nearby church, and she demands to wear her finest clothes.  She takes Ingeri with her.

There is drama between the two women.  Karin danced with Ingeri’s baby-daddy the night before, and there’s some other stuff too.  They cross a little stream by an old water mill and enter a forest, but Ingeri freaks out and refuses to continue.  She stays with the old guy running the water mill.  He seems to be Odin!  He molests Ingeri and she runs after Karin.

Karin, meanwhile, has been spotted by a trio of brothers (two adult and one boy) who are tending to their goats.  They entice Karin into eating a meal with them.  She is naturally friendly and funny, sharing all of her food and drink with them, but she eventually realizes that she is in danger.  Karin tries to escape but the two older brothers catch her and sexually assault her.  Afterwards, Karin stands up and walks away, but one of the brothers bashes her on the head with a branch and she dies.  They strip off her fancy clothes and run away.  Ingeri caught up and watched the entire scene.  She continues to watch as the youngest brother tries to eat some more food, but he retches.  He tosses some dirt on Karin and runs after his brothers.

We cut back to Tore and Mareta’s homestead, where the three brothers are asking to spend the night to avoid the cold!  Tore lets the men stay in the great hall, and everyone shares an awkward meal.  The youngest brother can’t eat anything without spitting it up.  Everyone goes to bed.  Tore and Mareta are freaking out because Karin hasn’t come home yet.  Mareta goes to check on the youngest brother, and the older one offers to sell her Karin’s dress, which is naturally recognizes!  She takes the dress to Tore, who takes out his sword.

Tore is heading to the great hall when he finds Ingeri, who has returned and is trying to hide.  She confirms that the men killed Karin, and she confesses that she feels guilty because while she was watching she willed it to happen.  She helps Tore prepare for the upcoming vengeance.  Tore and Mareta quietly enter the great hall.  Tore goes through the brothers’ bags and finds the rest of Karin’s clothes.  He sits and waits for the morning.

A rooster crows and he wakes up the brothers.  The brothers try to fight back, but he stabs one of them, and he holds the other down atop the fire.  Mareta tries to protect the youngest brother, but Tore grabs him and throws him against the wall and kills him, too.  The entire household then leaves to find Karin’s body.  Ingeri leads them to it.  Tore says that he doesn’t understand god, but he still asks for forgiveness.  He vows to build a church on the very spot where Karin died.  He and Mareta pick up the body, and water begins to spring from where the head rested.  Everyone is amazed.

Is this really a horror movie?  Probably not, it’s mostly drama, a tale about righteous parental vengeance, but it uses elements of horror to tell the story.  (The story is also based on a very old folk tale, so it might also be folk horror.)  The acting is superb, and the tension builds ominously when the brothers arrive at Tore and Mareta’s home.  The extended, Christian, ending is a tone shift, but the original source is literally about the building of a particular little church, so I guess it was unavoidable.  Numerous later movies are either a direct homage to this (“The Last House on the Left” (1972) and “The Last House on the Left” (2009)) or follow in the same trope of revenge (ex. “I Spit on Your Grave” (1978) and “I Spit on Your Grave” (2010)).  This is a great movie, a meditation on the transition between different belief systems.  Tore goes pagan on his daughter’s killers, but I’ll note that his more devoutly Christian wife didn’t raise a peep when her husband killed the men.

[avahs]

The virgin suicides-

Bonnie died dreaming of highways

[philipkindreddickhead]

My roommate thinks hes screwing me out of something when he trades my criterions for his non criterions. No really, I will take "hot dummy fails his knight's quest" over "not another daddy's rape revenge fantasy" idc that its black and white and some crusty group said its cooler than mine.

[amr-mandour]

[rassilon-imprimatur]

The Virgin Spring, Bergman (1960) /// Northwest Passage, Lynch (1990)

[tunasaladonwhite]

[cinemajunkie70]

The happiest of birthdays in the afterlife to 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.

[v1rginsu1cidal]

Feeling a little bit off lately

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[dollymess]

buds shall bloom

[thelostlisbonsister]

[b1kinikiller]

i freaking love pomegranate