The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960, 1:30’) Assignment

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduvLI3UhIThe Virgin Spring is a meticulously crafted work of art full of symbols, symmetrical patterns and breathtaking camerawork.

The story is based on a medieval ballad. It tells us about Herr Töre, a lord who lives on his farm in 13th century Sweden with his wife Fru Märeta, his daughter Karin and a foster-daughter Ingeri who is a worshipper of the pagan god Odin and is pregnant out of wedlock. On occasion of the approaching Feast of Candlemas, Töre asks his daughter Karin to bring candles to the church of Father Erik so that he can bless them. By tradition they can only be brought by a virgin. Karin asks Ingeri to accompany her. During their journey they meet the farmer Snollsta and a sinister bridge keeper. Then three goatherds –the Thin Man, the Mute and the Boy- notice Karin on her horse and conceive an evil plan. They have a meal together; Karin blesses the food, while Ingeri hides in the bushes. The herdsmen rape Karin and kill her.

In the evening the herdsmen arrive at the farm of Töre and Märeta asking for a lodging for the night … They are welcomed and have a meal. In the night Märeta makes a terrible discovery…

The Virgin Spring is a tale of guilt, sin and redemption. It shows that evil is a possibility in everyone’s heart and also that even the greatest sins can turn into an event of grace and redemption.

This is not an easy movie. Every detail in this film is connected somehow with the whole; nothing is accidental. Words, moments of silence, apparently insignificant gestures, speeches, music, songs, and clothes, they all beautifully interact. The film is rich in symbolic language taken from nature: water, fire, earth, smoke, the birch, the crow, the toad, and the goats; and it abounds in meaningful contrasts like the Nordic pagan religiosity with its fear and spells yielding to Christian hospitality and mercy, the chiaroscuro imagery of light and shadows or the physical dissimilarity between the blond Karin and the dark haired Ingeri. Elements of fairy tale narrative stand side by side with ominous statements and events, and poetic prophecies foreshadowing things to come. But all these are mere threads that carefully weave the pattern of a medieval human drama as a reflection of the human drama. The camera of Sven Nykvist mercilessly makes us spectators of and participants in the dramatic events that focus us on faith, evil, sin (hate, envy and lechery), guilt, forgiveness, death, repentance, mercy, and redemption. Also from the religious-historical point of view the film is interesting. The Christianization of Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular, which started in the 9th century was a very gradual process. In The Virgin Spring we witness how in the 13th century old Nordic paganism is still alive, even in the mentality of the Christians, but also how a new humanity was breaking through the clouds of fear and superstition.

Assignment: Write an ESSAY of ca. 350 words in which you show that each of the five protagonists (Töre, Märeta, Karin, Ingeri, the Boy) have both

(1) goodness in them but also

(2) their burden of guilt to bear. Focus on the moments in which this guilt-awareness appears in each one of them.