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Amphibians in Movies |
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The Virgin Spring (1960) |
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Spoiler Alert !
Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
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This great tragic film by Ingmar Bergman won an Oscar for best foreigh film.
In the first toad scene,
we see Ingiri, a pregnant wild bastard woman, who is jealous of Karin, the young virginal daughter of the rich family that has taken Ingiri into their family as a servant. Ingiri prays to the god Odin while the rest of the family is Christian. She is instructed to make a sandwich for Karin to take on her trip to church. Ingiri starts to make a sandwich when she notices a toad on the floor. She picks it up. She takes two large pieces of flat round bread, scooping out the middle of each piece, then she puts the toad in the bread and wraps it up so it can't escape. This is either some kind of curse, or just a nasty prank she is pulling on Karin.
As Ingiri and Karin take a long walk to the church, Ingiri goes into a jealous rage then freaks out, because she is scared to go into the dark forest. Karin leaves her at the house of an old one-eyed toothless shaman guy with a creek pouring through his living room who says he can help Ingiri. He empties a dried up finger, a bat, and a couple of snakes out of a box, saying the snakes are "a cure for your anguish and a cure for your woe."
Later when Karin stops for a picnic lunch when three goat-herding brothers appear. One of them drops the round sandwich and the toad pops out. This seems to make them very angry but it's hard to know if it's because they have now been cursed by the toad, or if they're just angry that she was trying to trick them into eating a toad. It's also hard to know if the toad is what caused them to rape and murder Karin, or if they would have done that anyway. I told you this movie was tragic....
The toad we see is most likely Bufo bufo, the only toad found in Sweden. |
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