With [this film], Ingmar Bergman has moved without further hesitation into the deep crucial places of tragic art, into the abiding forest which surrounds our daytime and gives the lie to our belief that all contingent evils can be socialized away.

| Jan 30, 2024

As filmmakers move from one period to the next, sometimes the most fascinating examples of their work occur in the transitions between phases. The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) is such a film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 10, 2023

Fleshing out the source material, director Ingmar Bergman and writer Ulla Isaksson have created a powerful examination of Old Testament ire coupled with New Testament redemption.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 10, 2021

Its finest moments are its most self-consciously mythic, when the archness of the performances and the painterly gloom are allowed to attack Big Questions About God.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2020

There is too much heavy symbolism and too many stagey groupings, both typical Bergman faults.

| Feb 10, 2019

Overwrought and ineffective...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 17, 2019

The Virgin Spring is Bergman's murder ballad: Bloody, remorseless, and tragic.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 28, 2018

A film of terrible beauty.

| Sep 27, 2018

That it's shot like a fairytale forest showcases the glory of God's creations, which are of course marred by the hideousness of men's hearts.

| Aug 4, 2018

Easily lost amid a brilliant career, The Virgin Spring once again shows Bergman's control in capturing the furthest ranges of emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 7, 2008

Bergman's instinctive approach to filmmaking %u2013 like his gripping use of long wordless moments filled with pictures of great power, is in evidence, with some unforgettable scenes that even today, almost 50 years later, have fresh impact.

| Feb 14, 2008

Masterfully directed by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 22, 2006

Winner of the Foreign-Language Oscar Picture, the film represents the first peak of Ingmar Bergman's creativity, released right after The Seventh Seal and before Through a Glass Darkly, all three masterpieces.

| Original Score: A | Oct 21, 2006

[Auds] will be rewarded by the depth of the director's moral and religious questioning, the emotional power of the story and acting, the haunting and symbolic imagery, and the excellent black-and-white photography of Sven Nykvist.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 29, 2006

Although the 'jiggery-pokery' does mute the 'actual, horrible story,' Bergman still poses worthy questions, offering no answers, a key difference between art and baloney, or spirituality and dogmatism.

| Apr 5, 2006

It is also a crucial film because it was the first to be shot entirely by Sven Nykvist, who would become Bergman's longtime cinematographer and would be largely responsible for shaping the visual aesthetic of his later works.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 18, 2006

The master guides us through this heartbreaking tale with a delicate hand and a gorgeous, poetic touch. It's actually one of his simplest and most moving works -- a film to be savored and pondered.

| Feb 16, 2006

Sven Nykvist's luminous black-and-white photography conspiring with the austerity of Bergman's imagery to create an extraordinary metaphysical charge.

| Jan 26, 2006

Represents the primary nexus between Bergman's austere but accessibly recherché works of the 1950s and his downright ascetic 1960s cinema.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 23, 2006

It is far from an easy picture to watch or entirely commend. For Mr. Bergman has stocked it with scenes of brutality that, for sheer unrestrained realism, may leave one sickened and stunned.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 9, 2005