#ove porath

[byneddiedingo]

Brigitta Petterson in The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

Cast: Max von Sydow, Brigitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Brigitta Petterson, Axel Düberg, Tor Isedal, Allan Edwall, Ove Porath, Axel Slangus, Gudrun Brost, Oscar Ljung. Screenplay: Ulla Isaksson. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erik Nordgren. 

The Virgin Spring was probably the first Bergman film I ever saw, and it made a powerful impression that stuck with me. I think that's one reason why I have mixed feelings about it today. I remembered it as a simple tale based on a 13th-century Swedish ballad, in which a young girl on her way to church is raped and murdered, but from the ground where the crime took place, a spring of fresh water erupts miraculously. But watching it today I see a more complex story, full of moral ambiguities. The girl, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), is not such a paragon as I remembered: She is spoiled and prideful, trying to sleep late and avoid the task of taking the candles to the church. She may not even be as innocent as she is thought to be: The servant, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), who accompanies her says the reason she wants to sleep late is that she was out the previous night flirting with a boy. Karin's mother, Märeta (Birgitta Valberg), is on the one hand a religious fanatic given to self-torture, and on the other an indulgent parent unwilling to discipline her daughter. Karin's father, Töre (Max von Sydow), is divided between the Christian faith he has adopted and a furious desire to wreak revenge on the rapist-murderers. After he has killed the two men and the boy who accompanied them, he expresses remorse but also blames God for his daughter's fate. He vows to build a church on the site, and the spring gushes forth, but as a miracle it seems like a somewhat anticlimactic response to the horror that has gone before. (It's not like the site, where running water is copious, even needs another spring.) Bergman for once is working from a screenplay he didn't write: It's by Ulla Isaksson, which may be why the film is poised so ambiguously between Christian affirmation and Bergman's usual bleak alienation. It is, however, one of Bergman's most beautifully accomplished films, joining him with the cinematographer Sven Nykvist, with whom he had worked only once before (seven years earlier on Sawdust and Tinsel), and with whom he would form one of the great working partnerships in film history. In its evocation of medieval narrative and meticulous re-creation of a milieu (the production designer is P.A. Lundgren), it's superb. But as a film from one of the great modern directors it seems oddly anachronistic and insincere.

[frankenpagie]

4.08.19

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Ove Porath, Birgitta Pettersson

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2018:

42. Jungfrukällan/The Virgin Spring (1960) - Dir. Ingmar Bergman

[drasnianfrank]

21 in 2021

Rules! Choose 21 books you want to read or goals you want to achieve in 2021. That’s it! It can be a mix of books and goals, or 21 books, or 21 goals…. it’s up to you. Then tag some friends to play along.

Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxell

Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth

Fangs by Sarah Anderson

The Hit Charade by Tyler Gray

Rejected Princess by Jason Porath

The American Plague by Molly Crosby

A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Six Harvests in Lea, Texas by Sam Starbuck

A Man and his cat by Umi Sakurai

The Magus of the Library vol. 4 by Mitsu Izumi

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

Death Comes to Archbishop by Willa Cather

The Old Guard vol. 1: Opening Fire by Greg Rucka

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

Disfigured: on fairy tales, disability, and making space by Amanda Leduc

Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

Johannes Cabal Novels by Jonathan Howard

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. 

For whoever~

[facesofcinema]

Jungfrukällan (1960)

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Max von Sydow, Tor Isedal, Ove Porath, Axel Düberg, Birgitta Valberg

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Ove Porath, Axel Düberg, Tor Isedal, Birgitta Pettersson, Gunnel Lindblom

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Max von Sydow, Tor Isedal, Ove Porath, Axel Düberg

[ozu-teapot]

Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) | Ingmar Bergman | 1960

Ove Porath