Film

Bergman’s first film to win an Academy Award, as well as his first full-length collaboration with the legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist, is this harrowing Swedish ballad injected with moral ambiguity and inner turmoil, about a father who seeks vengeance for his daughter, who has been raped and murdered. Von Sydow stars as the tormented patriarch, a feudal landowner devoted to the Christian faith, who finds himself at odds with pagan superstitions. Like many of Bergman’s best films during this astonishingly fertile period, The Virgin Spring finds a masterful artist grappling with spiritual doubt.