Review of The Virgin Spring

I have to agree with the previous comment, this is certainly a sad film I would go further, it's actually a grim little tale. Bergman pulls no punches, the medaeval world he shows is a hard, harsh, bleak place. There is a sense of menace in almost every scene and the actual rape is graphic and nearly unwatchable. The characters are not finely drawn, but after all this is a fairy tale in the older mould. They are there to represent types and conditions. The sad, doting mother; the unbending Christian gentleman; the flawed cleric; the ferocious, deceitful rapist-murderers. The tale on one level is very simple and can be simply followed; jealous sister curses more favoured sister, favoured sister is cruelly killed, killers ironically claim refuge of her father, father exacts revenge on them. So far we have something that could have come out of many a European ballad tradition. However, on another level it contains fundamental comments on humanity and human behaviour, Christian moral theology and our reaction to it. The father's faith is tested, he is not the man he thinks he is and his religion is not what he thinks it is either, though he submits and adopts a position of blind hope. The killers represent the complete absence of good that Aquinas maintained was the definition of evil. The young brother is the pain of conscience. In many ways it is a play on the deadly sins, apart from gluttony they are all there; wrath on the part of the father and pride in his daughter; envy in the half-sister; lust and avarice in the herdsmen and so on. It is truly an exemplary tale, as a medaeval legend should be. I bought this film casually at a street stall in Taipei for an absurdly small amount of money and it lay on a shelf unwatched for quite some time. In a bored moment one night I slipped it in the player and found myself enthralled until the finish. The cinematography, of course, is excellent but the joy is the dark threat that filigrees it, the simple but powerful emotions both quietly and violently displayed. It lacks the grandeur of "The Seventh Seal". It's a smaller and more compact number but it some ways the better for it, the evocations are more direct and the violence unnerving. I recommend it very highly indeed, you will be thinking on its themes long after this simple little tale finishes.