"Actor: Gudrun Brost"

• The Virgin Spring | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1960 and set in mediaeval Sweden, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring is based on a folk ballad. It also examines a society in transition from worshipping the old Norse gods to Christianity. The film starkly contrasts Ingeri--a dark, feral Odin-worshipping brunette, foster daughter to a Christian family headed by Max Von Sydow--and their own daughter, Karin, pretty and blonde but also vain and naive, and resented by Ingeri. They travel out together to a distant church where Karin is to offer votive candles to the Virgin Mary. However, en route, Karin is raped and murdered by two desperate goatherders, accompanied by a 13-year-old boy. By coincidence, the goatherders then seek refuge with Karin's parents and even try to sell them her clothes, which proves to be a mortal error. Bergman was greatly influenced by Kurosawa, the Japanese director of The Seven Samurai, when he made The Virgin Spring, as evinced in its ominous use of dark and shade and lengthy sequences without dialogue. However, this is more than pastiche. Although the Christian ending with which Bergman feels obliged to conclude the film doesn't quite sit well in a movie in which God is as palpably absent as in any Bergman movie, the slow, remorseless pace of the murder and subsequent retribution bring to mind Kieslowki's A Short Film About Killing in their sense of the futility of vengeance. On the DVD: The Virgin Spring arrives on disc in a restoration that vividly enhances the sense of light and shade which is integral to the movie. Notes from critic Phillip Strick provide background to the movie, including the legend on which the film was based, as well as observing that Bergman was later so embarrassed by the film's debt to Kurosawa that he disowned it, only to be told by Kurosawa himself not to be so silly. --David Stubbs

• Sawdust And Tinsel (1953) | Blu Ray | (21/01/2019) from £15.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Ingmar Bergman's early masterpiece, a wrenching battle of the sexes, in a new 2K restoration Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival of humiliation in Sawdust and Tinsel, one of the master's most vivid early works and his first of many collaborations with the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Persona). The story of the charged relationship between a turnofthetwentieth century circus owner (A Lesson in Love's Åke Grönberg) and his younger mistress (Harriet Andersson), a horseback rider in the traveling show, the film features dreamlike detours and twisted psychosexual power plays, making for a piercingly brilliant depiction of physical and spiritual degradation. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary by Ingmar Bergman scholar Peter Cowie Introduction by Bergman from 2003 PLUS: An essay by critic John Simon

• Hour Of The Wolf | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (62.50%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Haunted by demons past and present artist Johan Borg fights a losing battle to retain his sanity and maintain his artistic prowess. His wife Alma desperate to help him finds herself starting to share his hallucinations. But as Johan's mind continues to unravel Alma is forced to choose bewteen her love and her life...