SUBJECTS

Folk songs, Swedish -- Film and video adaptations, Jungfrukällen (Ballad) -- Film and video adaptations, Murder -- Drama, Rape -- Drama, Revenge -- Drama, Sweden -- History -- 14th century -- Drama

The Virgin Spring

(Jungfrukällan)

featuring

Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Pettersson,

Bergman went to a medieval wellspring, a folk song whose simplicity and stark violence he recreated in purely visual terms, for his first collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. A girl in the bloom of innocent sensuality is raped and murdered. A young boy who has watched his brothers perform the act suffers along with them the terrible revenge of her father (Max von Sydow). Bergman’s medieval forays derive their strange beauty from the fact that early Christianity seems foreign and mythic to contemporary viewers. But no film in his oeuvre could be more modern in its Freudian overtones, and the agnosticism it provokes in the viewer.

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Ulla Isaksson
Based On
  • the 14th-century ballad “Töre’s Daughter in Vänge”

Cinematographer
  • Sven Nykvist
Language
  • Swedish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 89 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Jungfrukällan (The virgin spring) documents  

Winter light: A tribute to Ingmar Bergman (program note), Harvard Film Archive, 2008

The virgin spring (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, 2005

The passion of Ingmar Bergman (program), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, Bart Testa, 2005

Next to godliness (review), Village Voice, Elliott Stein, 2004

Ingmar Bergman's magic lantern: life as art in retrospect (program note), Hopkins Center of Dartmouth College, Ulrike Rainer, 1988

The virgin spring (review), Village Voice, Andrew Sarris, 1985

The virgin spring (program note), Facets Multimedia, 1983

The virgin spring (program note), S.E.F.S., 1973

The virgin spring (distributor materials), Janus Films, 1973

The virgin spring (distributor materials), Janus Films, 1973

Displaying 10 of 18 publicly available documents.


View all Jungfrukällan (The virgin spring) documentation on CineFiles.