Focus Features

In Sweden on this day in 1960, audiences got to see Ingmar Bergman’s provocative religious parable The Virgin Spring for the first time. Inspired by the old Swedish folk ballad “Per Tyrssons döttrar,” Bergman’s movie tells a harsh tale of violence and revenge against the backdrop of Sweden in the Middle Ages: Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), a young Christian girl is separated from her pregnant, pagan foster sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom) on the way to church when she is brutally raped and killed by three herdsmen. Her killers then unwittingly end up in the house of her their victim’s parents (Max von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg), who realize the men have murdered their daughter (when the men try to sell the mother her clothes), after which the father kills all three. The film ends with a spring rising up from where Karin is buried, seemingly symbolizing redemption for her father’s act of revenge. One of Bergman’s darkest and morally complex films, The Virgin Spring was ironically made at very positive time in the director’s life, as he enjoyed married life with his fourth wife, concert pianist Käbi Laretei, and relished his first creative collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Well received domestically, the film made an even bigger impact in the U.S., where it raised Bergman’s profile considerably by winning the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. (It was also banned in Fort Worth, Texas, where the movie’s rape scene was deemed unsuitable for local audiences.) In 1972, Wes Craven memorably revisited the movie’s premise in The Last House on the Left, which was itself remade in 2009.

In Sweden on this day in 1960, audiences got to see Ingmar Bergman’s provocative religious parable The Virgin Spring for the first time. Inspired by the old Swedish folk ballad “Per Tyrssons döttrar,” Bergman’s movie tells a harsh tale of violence and revenge against the backdrop of Sweden in the Middle Ages: Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), a young Christian girl is separated from her pregnant, pagan foster sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom) on the way to church when she is brutally raped and killed by three herdsmen. Her killers then unwittingly end up in the house of her their victim’s parents (Max von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg), who realize the men have murdered their daughter (when the men try to sell the mother her clothes), after which the father kills all three. The film ends with a spring rising up from where Karin is buried, seemingly symbolizing redemption for her father’s act of revenge. One of Bergman’s darkest and morally complex films, The Virgin Spring was ironically made at very positive time in the director’s life, as he enjoyed married life with his fourth wife, concert pianist Käbi Laretei, and relished his first creative collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Well received domestically, the film made an even bigger impact in the U.S., where it raised Bergman’s profile considerably by winning the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. (It was also banned in Fort Worth, Texas, where the movie’s rape scene was deemed unsuitable for local audiences.) In 1972, Wes Craven memorably revisited the movie’s premise in The Last House on the Left, which was itself remade in 2009.