The Virgin Spring
It’s kind of surprising that I had not yet seen “The Virgin Spring,” as I’ve been aware for some time that it was remade into Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left,” which I have seen (as well as the 2009 remake). I think, by that time, “A Movie a Week” had started, and watching movies like Ingmar Bergman’s had more to do with the review to come than just casual viewing. It is time to dig in, though, and watch Bergman’s film for myself.
This is a film based on a 13th Century ballad, and one can see the moral implications of such a story, and how that might be of interest to Bergman. It is a story of sin, grace and what happens when you are faced with the person you hate the most. For the director of “The Seventh Seal,” “Persona” and “Hour of the Wolf,” you understand all the ways he can bring this to life.
“The Virgin Spring” begins with Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom) as she is helping prepare the meal of the day for her lord and his household (Max Von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg). The candles need to be delivered to the Church, and it is their daughter Karin’s responsibility. Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is still asleep, tired after a long night of frivolity, but she does get ready for the day’s long trip, which the pregnant Ingeri accompanies her on. Along the way, Ingeri needs to rest, leaving Karin alone when she comes across three herdsmen. What happens next will change all of their fates, especially when the herdsmen find their way to Karin’s home for the night.
The more one digs into Bergman’s filmmography, the more you can see how he’s arguably as influential a filmmaker in America as Akira Kurosawa was when it comes to genre cinema. But whereas Kurosawa’s influence is actually a bouncing back of the inspiration he received from American cinema, Bergman’s is more original in the way he works within the supernatural, the psychological, and the moral, and how that made its way into the horror genre. And yet, Bergman is not someone we immediately associate with genre- I think that probably has to do with his settings for his films more than anything. In “Virgin Spring,” you immediately see why a filmmaker like Craven would see an opportunity to bring this story to a modern setting, and turn it into a thriller. Bergman’s film is more stoic, more in studying the ways that the characters react to the circumstances in the film. Why doesn’t Ingeri help Karin? What will Von Sydow’s Tore do when he finds out what happened? Is there a path for forgiveness? Can these characters forgive themselves? Even when all is said and done, the answers are not easy to accept, neither for us, nor the characters.
This era of Bergman where “The Virgin Spring” was made is fascinating. In so many of these films, Bergman treats God as a mystery, whose ways are inscrutable to people. “The Virgin Spring” was followed up with his “Silence of God” trilogy, but it was preceded by “The Seventh Seal,” which also has Von Sydow in a moral abyss involving death, although in that film, it was a physical embodiment of Death. In the end of “The Virgin Spring,” when he and his wife are reunited with their daughter, new life seems to come out of their pain. It’s one of the most striking and beautiful moments I’ve ever seen in one of Bergman’s films, and a welcome reprieve from the pain that preceded it.
