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Released by: Tartan Films UK
Released on: 10/28/2002
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Max Von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Pettersson, Axel Buberg, Tor Isedal
Year: 1960
The Movie:
Widely regarded as the loose inspiration for Wes Craven's angry masterpiece of exploitation, Last House On The Left, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring is a lot less trashy but still manages to pack a punch and deliver some powerful visuals and a tense and suspenseful story and is the movie that would win Bergman his first Academy Award in 1961 for Best Foreign Language Film.
Based on an old Medieval Swedish balled, the story is set in the fourteenth century and follows Karin and her pregnant half sister as they journey from the safe confines of their simple home through the woods to deliver some candles to their church. Along the way, Ingeri, the half sister, becomes nervous and so Karin decides that she should stay with a man that they meet along the way. Unfortunately, Ingeri gets even more frightened by the man who exhibits some pagan rituals to her, and she runs off after Karin.
She arrives in time to see the naí¯ve girl being brutally raped by two men (and a boy who looks on as it all occurs) but does nothing to stop the proceedings as she wants Karin to feel the same pain that she felt when it happened to her (thus her pregnancy). The three woodsmen eventually kill Karin and steal her garments, leaving her corpse in in the woods to rot in only her undergarments.
Ingeri runs off into the woods and the men disappear, only to turn up at the girls' home, asking their father, Tore (Max Von Sydow of The Exorcist and Dario Argento's Sleepless), for food and shelter for the night. He lets them into the servants' quarters for the night and feeds them. When he and his wife go to bed, she is awoken when she hears the boy yell. When she goes downstairs she finds him passed out, but the ringleader of the group is awake and he tries to pass on what he claims is the elaborate garment of his deceased sister to her to buy, as they claim to desperately need the money. She takes it upstairs to show her husband, and the two of them confirm it to belong to their daughter, Karin, who has not yet arrived home.
SPOILERS BELOW:
When Ingeri returns home and confirms to Tore that she did indeed witness the very men staying in their home raping and murdering her half sister, Tore cares not that she admits to having wanted it to happen. Instead, he becomes enraged and proceeds to brutally murder not only the two men but also the boy who accompanied them as well in one of the most intense scenes ever committed to celluloid.
END OF SPOILERS.
The Virgin Spring is an intense and disturbing movie that has all of the impact of Craven's remake with a lot less of the sleaze. Beautifully shot in stark black and white and with some stand performances, particularly from Von Sydow who is quite intimidating in the final moments of the film, and Birgitta Pettersson as the beautiful but naí¯ve Karin, who ultimately pays the final price for being far too trusting of strangers.
While the final scene of the film does feel unnecessary as it brings to the forefront Bergman's preoccupation with the human compulsion to believe in a God, it does raise some interesting themes despite itself and doesn't even come close to ruining the film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
While the first few minutes of the film, mostly during the credits sequence, do demonstrate a bit of print damage and washed out blacks, after this the picture quality improves quite a bit and overall this is a nice looking effort from Tartan. With the exception of the first few scenes, the contrast levels between the blacks and the whites are quite solid with the darker moments looking deep and solid and the whites still maintaining no small amount of detail throughout. It's not a perfect presentation, there are some slight edge enhancement issues, but for the most part it looks very nice.
The Virgin Spring is presented in its original Swedish language in Dolby Digital Mono with removable English subtitles. The audio is fine with only a small bit of background hiss in a couple of scenes, but the subtitles are white and when placed against some of the lighter moments in the film, are just a little bit harder to read than they should have been. That issue aside, the audio is unremarkable but more or less problem free aside from the noted issues.
As far as the extras go, the disc isn't exactly stacked but it does have a couple of little bonus features. First up are some interesting film notes, well written by Philip Strick that put the film into perspective in regards to its origins as a Swedish ballad. In addition, there are text pieces on Berman, Von Sydow, and Lindblom, as well as a video clip entitled The Bergman Collection that features some clips from all of the films in Tartan's Bergman line set to some music.
The Final Word:
The Virgin Spring remains a powerful and dark film with some amazing camerawork and a powerful performance from Von Sydow. The Tartan DVD isn't perfect, but until a better release comes along, it's at least sufficient despite it's lack of impressive extra features.