The Virgin Spring cover art

The Virgin Spring Details

1960 Certificate 15
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 1391 members

Derived from a medieval ballad, THE VIRGIN SPRING was director Ingmar Bergman's first film to win an Academy Award. The movie represents a return to simpler themes for Bergman after the philosophical complexity of THE SEVENTH SEAL and WILD STRAWBERRIES. On its most basic level, it's the story of violent crime violently avenged, .. Read more

Starring Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Brigitta Pattersson
Director Ingmar Bergman
Genres Drama, World Cinema

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The Virgin Spring cover art

The Virgin Spring

Derived from a medieval ballad, THE VIRGIN SPRING was director Ingmar Bergman's first film to win an Academy Award. The movie represents a return to simpler themes for Bergman after the philosophical complexity of THE SEVENTH SEAL and WILD STRAWBERRIES. On its most basic level, it's the story of violent crime violently avenged, but it can also be interpreted as a religious allegory on Christian forgiveness. A young girl, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), is raped and killed by two herdsman on her way to church. Her foster sister, played by Gunnel Lindblom, witnesses the crime and reports back to Karin's parents (Max von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg) shortly after the perpetrators arrive at the couple's home seeking shelter for the night, unaware of their hosts' identity. Karin's grief-stricken father decides to take brutal revenge on his daughter's murderers. THE VIRGIN SPRING represents Bergman's first full collaboration with director of photography Sven Nykvist, who had previously worked as a co-director of photography on SAWDUST AND TINSEL.

Starring Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Brigitta Pattersson
Director Ingmar Bergman
Studio PALISADES TARTAN
Run time DVD: 1 hr 26 mins
Certificate Certificate 15
Genres Drama, World Cinema
Language DVD: Swedish
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 28 Oct 2002
Production year: 1960
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (3) of The Virgin Spring

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  • 4 stars out of 5

    Winner of the 1960 Oscar for best foreign film, Ingmar Bergman's stark study of the cruelty and superstition of the Middle Ages positively drips with symbolism. However, it also works as a powerful revenge tragedy, as Max von Sydow encounters the men who raped and murdered his daughter after she'd been cursed by her half-sister. Often considered one of Bergman's bleakest films, the story has a miraculous ending that dispels his doubts about the presence of God. The acting has an all-too-rare intensity and the photography of Sven Nykvist (working with Bergman for the first time) is a joy to behold. The film was to later provide the basis for Wes Craven's infamous horror nasty, Last House on the Left.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006

  • Bergman won his first Oscar for this cruel but unsensational medieval allegory, a tale of superstition, religious... read more on Time Out

    • Time Out
    • Posted 04 Nov 2008

  • Most helpful member's review of The Virgin Spring

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  • 7 out of 7 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5 stars

    Virgin Springs Anew

    This is a black and white film. Not because it’s filmed in monochrome, but because it’s from a time of contrasting certitudes.

    Bad men were truly evil; the innocent is pure; the wild girl is almost feral; and a father’s revenge is dreadful.

    There is no subtlety in the story but there is in the acting. Although the characters may be extreme, the actors avoid being caricatures my showing great feelings with consummate understatement.

    I’d seen this a quarter of a century ago and was taken back, not only to the middle ages, but also to the time I had first seen it.

    Great art always has the power of connecting the personal with the universal.

      • johnnyL from County Antrim
      • Posted 22 Mar 2005 01:32

  • Most recent members' review of The Virgin Spring

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  • 1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    Good, but I expected more.

    From reading reviews from others I was expecting another helping of Bergman genius - I got what I ordered, but no desert.

    'A day that starts out well, always ends in sorrow' - These words are said in some form or another during the film, and which basically sums up the plot quite well.

    The rape scene IS truly grim, not graphic in a Clockwork Orange sense, but just grim. What ensues from thence onwards is the wrath of Sydow's character, but I feel the film fell flat from here on and did not end what it started.

    Better than three stars, but for Bergman I hoped for more.

      • Edgar Jephcote from Notts, England
      • Posted 02 Jul 2005 22:02

  • News and features

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    Saraband

    Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

    • 31 Jul 2007

    See the entire LOVEFiLM Bergman Collection here Checkmate. Death has finally taken the great Swedish master, Ingmar Bergman, as he always knew it must. No filmmaker wrestled longer and more painfully with the knowledge of his own mortality. His father was a severe Lutheran minister, and a figure who cast a long shadow over Bergman's films, including his premature swansong, Fanny and Alexander (1982), and perhaps his purest masterpiece, Winter Light (1962), a portrait of a pastor who has lost... Read more

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      • Derived from a medieval ballad, THE VIRGIN SPRING was director Ingmar Bergman's first film to win an Academy Award. The movie represents a return to simpler themes for Bergman after the philosophical ...