Jungfrukallan = The Virgin Spring

Bergman won his first Academy Award for this brooding medieval tale based in an old Swedish ballad, closely comparable with the ‘Seventh seal’, examining the conflict between Christianity and pagnism rife throughout the Middle Ages. Set in beautiful 14th Century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of peasant parents (Max Von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg) whose daughter, a young virgin is brutally raped and murdered by swineherds after her half sister has invoked a pagan curse. By a bizarre twist of fate the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl’s parents, who, discovering the truth about their lodgers, exact a chilling revenge. A cruel and sensational allegory, a tale of superstition, religious fervour, muurder and revenge, the formal simplicity and overt symbolism conspire to create an extraordinary metaphysical charge, aided by the the luminous, haunting black and white photography and Bergman’s meticulous direction.