A review of the classic Swedish 1957 film “The Seventh Seal”
This black and white treatise on death and belief, written and directed by the Swedish Ingmar Bergman, was described by David Thomson, in his compendium “Have You Seen …”, as “one of the most important pictures in the history of international cinema”.
It follows the final days of the 14th century knight, Antonius Block, returning from ten years struggle in the Crusades to find the Black Death scything through his homeland. The tall, blond-haired, good-looking star is Max von Sydow who eventually appeared in 11 films directed by Bergman. Although the work deals with hugely serious issues, it is not without playfulness, provided especially by a troupe of travelling performers, one of whom is played by Bibi Anderson with whom Bergman had an affair while on his third marriage.
I once did a course on Film Moments at London’s City Literary Institute and this classic film features two of the most famous images in the history of cinema. At the beginning, we find the knight endeavouring to postpone his ending by challenging Death, white-faced and black-cowled, to a game of chess, played in the liminal space between land and sea and between life and death. At the end, we see, on the crest of a distant hill, a line of cavorting figures being led away in a Dance of Death.
Bergman grew up in a deeply religious household headed by his father who was a Lutheran minister and, at the time he made “The Seventh Seal” – a reference to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament – the director was wrestling intensely with whether God existed and whether faith could give life meaning.