A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #321: Ing­mar Bergman’s Jungfrukäl­lan [The Vir­gin Spring].

The Vir­gin Spring is based on a Swedish bal­lad called “Töre’s Daugh­ter in Vänge” that, for the life of me, I can­not find online [although it is avail­able as part of the liner notes for the Cri­te­rion edi­tion of the film]. This bal­lad recounts the rape and mur­der of a vir­gin on her way to church and the father’s ret­ri­bu­tion. The bal­lad is short and was fleshed out sig­nif­i­cantly in Bergman’s final treat­ment, with added lay­ers of con­flict, pathos and exis­ten­tial strug­gle to sup­port the weight of a fea­ture length film. I remem­ber a cou­ple of film majors who hated Bergman when I was in col­lege. I’ve never really had that ani­mos­ity, I like the state­li­ness of his style and the respect with which he treats his char­ac­ters. The Vir­gin Spring is no slouch when it comes to this, and Ang Lee’s intro­duc­tion [appar­ently The Vir­gin Spring was the first art film he ever saw] seems to back up my own feel­ings on Bergman.

The story is a mir­a­cle play, a moral­ity play and a folk tale. There is great ten­sion between newly con­verted Chris­t­ian Swedes [many of whom have no idea what a church looks like] and those who still wor­ship Odin & Co. There is gen­der and class ten­sion as well, and an under­cur­rent of the super­nat­ural that the char­ac­ters rec­og­nize as pow­er­ful and use­ful, although they are too human to use it themselves.

Blonde-​haired Karin is the spoiled only daugh­ter of Töre and Ingeri is a dark and wild fos­ter­ling who does most of the work. They are nec­es­sar­ily antag­o­nists and Karin’s token Chris­tian­ity is bal­anced by the fer­vor of Ingeri’s pagan­ism. Sim­i­larly, the Chris­t­ian fer­vor of Töre’s wife Märeta is bal­anced by her hus­bands spir­i­tu­ally shrugged shoulders.

Karin gets all spiffed out in her best to go deliver some can­dles to church. Ingeri sets off with her but gets freaked out by some creep­tas­tic guy who mans the ford at the river. Once she escapes, it is too late for Karin. She’s already deep in the clutches of three herders who spout things like the wolf says to Red Rid­ing Hood. She is raped [a scene which was heav­ily cen­sored at the time of release in the US, but seems rather tame now, espe­cially in com­par­ion with Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs] and after the act, her hys­ter­ics cause one of the herders to club her to death. They strip her of her fin­ery and run off, leav­ing their lit­tle brother who is wracked with guilt, to guard the body. [If ever there was a time for a joke in poor taste about “If she didn’t want to be raped she shouldn’t have dressed that way” this is it. Bergman’s treat­ment keeps the vic­tim­hood with Karin though. She is not at fault.]

As Fate or the All­fa­ther or God would have it, the herders show up at Töre’s farm and beg guestright for the evening. Töre offers it to them and they break bread. The lit­tlest herder gets sick because of his guilt, and the fact that he knows they are in the house of the daugh­ter they killed adds extra suf­fer­ing. Later that evening one of the herders offers to sell Karin’s clothes back to the mother. This part strikes me as slightly con­fus­ing, unless he knows that he is pro­tected by guestright and just wants to rub in his act, why would he give those clothes back?

Once Töre dis­cov­ers that he has fed and shel­tered the mur­der­ers of his only daugh­ter he decides to take vengeance. First he takes a puri­fy­ing bath, and while he goes out to get some birch branches, decides to rip the whole tree out of the ground in his agony and anger.

He pre­pares him­self, with the help of Ingeri, and then mur­ders all three herders, includ­ing the boy, most viciously. Wracked with guilt that he so eas­ily acted unChris­tian­like and stuff, he searches out Karin’s body and has a heart to heart with God. Tore says that he doesn’t under­stand God, but asks for for­give­ness any­way, and promises to build a stone and mor­tar church [the stone and mor­tar is a big deal in 14^th Cen­tury Swe­den] on the site of her mur­der. In covenant, a spring appears where Karin lay and the film ends.

Down to fun­da­men­tals, the film wres­tles with emo­tions and desires that are restricted by moral and spir­i­tual codes. It is no less impor­tant that Töre broke guestright than he mur­dered a child and dis­carded his new faith. The vicious­ness of the rape is nec­es­sary to bal­ance the depth of Töre’s rage and later repen­tence. In the final wash, Bergman seems to be say­ing that life is often self­ish and ter­ri­ble, but those same ter­ri­ble acts can act as spurs to acts of self­less cre­ation. I guess.

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Peter Cowie
• Max Von Sydow Gallery from The Vir­gin Spring