The violation of a precious daughter is perhaps the most unspeakable act anyone could commit towards a father's daughter, and it is this act which triggers the vengeful spirit in Ingmar Bergman's 1960 film The Virgin Spring, starring Bergman regular Max von Sydow. Bergman regular Max von Sydow plays a Christian farmer who sends his beautiful young daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) to deliver candles to the church one morning, along with her maid servant. Along the way things take a turn for the worse when she encounters a group of goat herds, who proceed to rape then murder her. By a twist of irony, the murderers later take shelter at her farm, and when they try to sell her parents the clothes they stole from her corpse, the father sets out for revenge. As much a commentary on the various kinds of faith (a preoccupation for much of Bergman's work) as a study in revenge and guilt, The Virgin Spring is one of Bergman's most accessible - and powerful - movies. Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film at the 1961 Academy Awards, it was also the inspiration for the considerably inferior The Last House on the Left ten years later.
