Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge, and savagery in medieval Sweden. With austere simplicity, the director tells the story of the rape and murder of the virgin Karin, and her father Töre’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance against the three killers. Starring Max von Sydow and photographed by the brilliant Sven Nykvist, the film is both beautiful and cruel in its depiction of a world teetering between paganism and Christianity.
SPECIAL FEATURES
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary from 2005 by Ingmar Bergman scholar Birgitta Steene
Interviews from 2005 with actors Gunnel Lindblom and Birgitta Pettersson
Introduction by filmmaker Ang Lee from 2005
Audio recording of a 1975 American Film Institute seminar by Bergman
Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack
PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film scholar Peter Cowie and screenwriter Ulla Isaksson and the medieval ballad on which the film is based
