After the father has violently avenged his daughter's rape and murder, he, the Christian patriarch of the family, breaks down & questions the existence of an eternal order of rightness, if it exists, etc., in what is probably one of the film's best scenes.
Another recent favorite of mine is Sam Peckinpah's *Straw Dogs*, another portrait of ordinary -- though dysfunctional -- folks pushed to a primal level of violence, rage, and revenge. In both films, the veneer of the civil, the polite, etc., seem to be shown up as pretty flimsy social constructs, perhaps futile and ridiculous social conventions that hypocritically repress an overwhelming visceral, tempting to say "animal," undercurrent of human behavior. (I know there is some controversy about the rape scene of Straw Dogs, which I find somewhat oddly shot though ultimately a horrific cinematic moment -- but that's another topic; the rape scene in Bergman's Virgin Spring, however, is unequivocally, almost unwatchably terrible to witness, and almost got the film banned.)
-B.
Dennis Claxton wrote
"from an interview with John Waters: I always loved the Kuchar Brothers, Kenneth Anger, William Castle – I still pray to him in moments of fear. And Bergman. People forget Bergman – he’s the real king of puke. He was responsible for the first time ever I saw vomit in a movie. He broke the puke curtain. In Baltimore, the Bergman movie ‘Monica’ was shown as a nude movie. It was called ‘Monica’s Hot Summer’ just because it showed breasts. It was in a porno theatre! http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/3176/the-directors-john-waters.html"