Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Virgin Spring (1960)
An extremely moving, tragic story of a family's response to their daughter's death. Not at all what I expected it to be. It moves somewhat slowly but is completely mesmerizing. This is the first Ingmar Bergman film I've seen, and it certainly makes me want to find more. 4 stars.
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Wow, Hannah. This was a particularly conspicuous first Bergman film to select! I first waded into his filmography in September, 2010 as a participant in a Criterion Collection viewing challenge. I decided to start with the four films in their "Ingmar Bergman: Four Master Works" box set. Here's what I wrote at the time:
I knew going into it that the premise was dark--a young girl is raped and killed in the woods--which is why I'd kept putting off this viewing. The starkness of the production, the explicit nature of the violence and the fact that the trio of brothers included a young boy made for a very visceral film. I tip my hat to any work of art that provokes such strong emotional response, but I cannot fathom viewing this a second time.
The examination of spirituality and religion found in The Seventh Seal is actually more compelling here. There, faith is more of an academic discussion; here it is subjected to an unrelenting crucible. I teared up a few times throughout the film, and that's extremely rare for me.
In retrospect, I really should have made this the third and not fourth selection I watched from the Bergman box set; Wild Strawberries would have been a very welcome final act, so to speak. I believe Criterion lists it third on the box package, and I would suspect it's because they suggest you don't end with this.
On a lighter note, every time I looked at Gunnel Lindblom, I thought of Fairuza Balk.
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