For the Biblical concept, see Seven seals. For the Rakim album, see The Seventh Seal (Rakim album).

Det sjunde inseglet
Directed by	Ingmar Bergman
Produced by	Allan Ekelund
Written by	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Max von Sydow Gunnar Björnstrand Bengt Ekerot Nils Poppe
Cinematography	Gunnar Fischer
Editing by	Lennart Wallén
Distributed by	Svensk Filmindustri Palador Pictures Pvt. Ltd. (India)
Release date(s)	16 February 1957 13 August, 1958
Running time	96 min.
Language	Swedish
Budget	$150,000 (estimated)
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The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is an existential 1957 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman about the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) across a plague-ridden landscape. Its best-known scene features the knight playing chess with the personification of Death, his life resting on the outcome of the game. The film has long been regarded a masterpiece of cinema. ^[1]

The title refers to a passage about the end of the world from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). Bergman developed the film from his own play Painting on Wood.

Synopsis

Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a knight, returns with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) from the Crusades and finds that his home country is ravaged by the plague. To his dismay, he discovers that Death (Bengt Ekerot) has come for him too. In order to buy time he challenges Death to a chess match, which allows him to reach his home and be reunited with his wife after ten years away. According to film historian Gerald Mast, “Blok challenges Death to a game of chess, knowing the inevitable result but obviously playing for time.”^[2] The knight's faith is war-weathered, and this theme is stressed in one of the scenes in the movie: the knight gives confession to a priest about his doubts whether God actually exists, he tells the priest how he challenged death to a game of chess and reveals his strategy, only to find that the "priest" is actually Death. In another powerful scene of a witch burning, the knight is asked by his squire whether he sees in the victim's eyes God or a vacancy. The disquieted knight refuses to acknowledge the victim's emptiness (and, in a way, his own) despite his doubts about God. The knight realizes that he would rather be broken in faith, constantly suffering doubt, than recognize a life without meaning. Gerald Mast writes,

“Like the gravedigger in “Hamlet”, the Squire [...] treats death as a bitter and hopeless joke. Since we all play chess with death, and since we all must suffer through that hopeless joke, the only question about the game is how long it will last and how well we will play it. To play it well, to live, is to love and not to hate the body and the mortal as the Church urges in Bergman's metaphor.”^[3]

During the fateful journey, Block and the squire encounter several features of medieval society and the way it dealt with the fear of death: penitence of flagellants, the burning of a witch and traveling actors. Bergman is particularly critical in his depiction of the clergymen, who profit from the atmosphere of terror engendered by the plague. They offer no spiritual comfort to their people, and are represented as little better than thieves. The 'witch' is burnt at the stake for 'having caused' the plague, in the community's “grotesque effort to put an end to the contagion” (Livingston 1982: 61). The witch-burning and the painful ritual that Jof is subjected to at the inn can be viewed as archaic rituals which aim at the purification of the community through sacrifice; violence is used to stabilize the order.^[4]

Bergman contrasts the despairing unbelief of the knight and the bitterness of his squire with the simple spiritual faith of the acrobat player Jof (Nils Poppe) and his young wife Mia (Bibi Andersson), who, together with their infant son Mikael, may be symbolic of the Holy family. The squire (Gunnar Björnstrand), while forcefully atheistic and cynical, displays a sensitivity which drives him to protect and aid those he can, and sympathize with those (like the witch) he cannot. Bergman has been suggested to identify most closely with this character.

Although the knight tells a priest (Death in disguise) that he is going to defeat Death by “a combination of the knight and the bishop”, he will eventually still lose. But the knight achieves the significant act which gives his life meaning, by enabling the escape of the young couple and their child. While the knight and his followers are led away over the hills in a medieval dance of death, the young family live to continue their journey.

Historical accuracy

The medieval Sweden portrayed in this movie is not totally accurate. It is unlikely that a knight returning from the Crusades would arrive home in the middle of the Black Death, for the last crusade (the Ninth) ended in 1271, and the bubonic plague hit Europe in 1348. In addition, the flagellant movement was foreign to Sweden, large-scale witch persecutions only began in the 1400s, and the theme of life and death as portrayed in the movie is more typical of existentialism in the 1950s than of the beliefs of medieval Swedes.^[5] A key turning point in the film is when Death captures the Queen in the chess game between Antonius and himself. But the Queen was not a superpowerful piece until centuries later when a recent chess-variant initially called "chess of the mad queen" became more popular than the classic game.

However, some of the film's images are derived from medieval art. For example, Bergman has stated that the image of a man playing chess with a skeletal Death was inspired by a medieval church painting from the 1480s in Täby kyrka, Täby, north of Stockholm, painted by Albertus Pictor.^[6]

Production

In interviews and in his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, Bergman has said that The Seventh Seal was a low-budget affair. Bergman had been given the go-ahead for the project from Carl-Anders Dymling at Svensk Filmindustri only after the success at Cannes of Smiles of a Summer Night, and was given a schedule of only thirty-five days, a short time for a film of this nature.

The famous opening scenes with Death and the Knight were shot at Hovs Hallar, a rocky, precipitous beach area in north-western Scania.

Impact

The Seventh Seal was Bergman's breakthrough film. When the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957, the attention generated by it (along with the previous year's Smiles of a Summer Night) made Bergman and his stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson well-known to the European film community, and the critics and readers of Cahiers du Cinéma, among others, discovered him with this movie. Within five years of this, he had established himself as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema.

With its reflections upon death and the meaning of life, The Seventh Seal became something of a figurehead for "serious" European films and, as such, has often been parodied in film and television. The representation of Death as a white-faced man in a dark cape has been the most popular object of parody, most notably in Woody Allen's Love and Death, and in the film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, in which the protagonists beat Death at Battleship, Clue, electric football and Twister.

Cast

• Gunnar Björnstrand - Jöns, squire
• Bengt Ekerot - Death
• Nils Poppe - Jof
• Max von Sydow - Antonius Block
• Bibi Andersson - Mia, Jof's wife
• Inga Gill - Lisa, blacksmith's wife
• Maud Hansson - Witch
• Inga Landgré - Karin, Block's Wife
• Gunnel Lindblom - Girl
• Bertil Anderberg - Raval
• Anders Ek - The Monk
• Åke Fridell - Blacksmith Plog
• Gunnar Olsson - Albertus Pictor, Church Painter
• Erik Strandmark - Jonas Skat

See also

• Middle Ages in film

References

Bibliography

• Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art by Paisley Livingston. Cornell University Press, 1982.

External links

• The Seventh Seal at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Seventh Seal at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• Criterion Collection essay by Peter Cowie
• Analysis of film
• Dennis DeNitto's analysis of the film

•  • [ e] The films of Ingmar Bergman
1940s	Crisis • It Rains on Our Love • A Ship to India • Music in Darkness • Port of Call • Prison • Thirst
1950s	To Joy • This Can't Happen Here • Summer Interlude • Secrets of Women • Summer with Monika • Sawdust and Tinsel • A Lesson in Love • Dreams • Smiles of a Summer Night • The Seventh Seal • Wild Strawberries • Brink of Life • The Magician
1960s	The Virgin Spring • The Devil's Eye • Through a Glass Darkly • Winter Light • The Silence • All These Women • Persona • Hour of the Wolf • Shame • The Rite • The Passion of Anna
1970s	The Touch • Cries and Whispers • Scenes from a Marriage • The Magic Flute • Face to Face • The Serpent's Egg • Autumn Sonata
1980s	From the Life of the Marionettes • Fanny and Alexander • Karin's Face • After the Rehearsal
1990s	In the Presence of a Clown
2000s	Saraband

Preceded by The Mystery of Picasso	Special Jury Prize, Cannes 1956 tied with Kanał	Succeeded by Mon Oncle