The Virgin Spring

Winner of the 1960 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, The Virgin Spring is one of the most powerful and important works in the Bergman canon, and stands as a natural companion piece to The Seventh Seal for its immaculate recreation of a barbarous and superstitious medieval milieu. Based on a 13th-century folk ballad, the film stars Max von Sydow as Töre, a wealthy landowner whose beloved virgin daughter is brutally raped and murdered while on a religious pilgrimage. A twist of fate finds the three killers seeking shelter at Töre's farm; when he discovers their responsibility for his daughter's death, he exacts a vengeance of Biblical proportions.