For those who all thought Bergman only went into existential tales of the meaning of life - well, this does too only it's also a vigilante movie. The first 40 minutes are hard going if you know what it's about - a bright happy blonde girl, a little irritating, is off to church, with the fond wishes of her mother and father. She's accompanied by the family maid, a trashy, pregnant and quite sexy pagan - the maid takes off, the girl runs into two herdsmen and a kid... The two guys rape her, we see it and its quite full on, and then they kill her. She's alive for a bit then she dies. The kid throws up.
Then the rapists rock up at the parent's house. Dad and mum figure out what's going on (the maid saw it all) and dad wreck's vengeance. He doesn't feel great about it but we're not too offended (I wasn't anyway) since the rapists were such loathsome creatures. Maybe it was harsh to kill the kid.
Some Bergman fans don't like this - it is kind of pro vigilante, and there's all this stuff going on with the tight bond between father and daughter, and the girl's purity, and the slutty other girl. You could interpret it a lot of different ways, some of them bad. I found it very powerful on a universal theme and it hasn't dated.
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