SUBJECTS

Bergman, Ingmar, 1918- Trämålning: moralitet -- Film and video adaptations, Black death -- Sweden -- Drama, Death -- Drama, God -- Drama, Knights and knighthood -- Sweden -- Drama, Sweden -- History -- 14th century -- Drama

The Seventh Seal

(Det sjunde inseglet)

BAMPFA Collection Print

featuring

Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe,

It may be folly to think that life and thus death could hold any secrets. With The Seventh Seal Bergman spoke to this modern query in a medieval setting rendered at once awesome and intimate in chiaroscuro. A knight, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), and his squire Jöns return disillusioned from the Crusades to the hysteria of plague-infested fourteenth-century Sweden. On the shore Block encounters Death and challenges him to a game of chess, playing for time to perform one significant act in life. What is timeless about this existential passion play is the humanity of its characters, who seem to shun allegory like a kind of narrative death: Block, whom the Crusades took away from the real—the only proof of God—to the torment of the abstract; Jöns, cynical sensualist who articulates the void; Death himself, a picture of inconclusiveness; and the dreamer Jof and his wife, actors traveling into light.
 

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Ingmar Bergman
Based On
  • Bergman's play Trämålning (Wood Painting)

Cinematographer
  • Gunnar Fischer
Language
  • Swedish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 96 mins
Source
  • BAMPFA
Permission
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View The Seventh Seal documents  

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) (article), Reader (Chicago, Ill.), 2007

The passion of Ingmar Bergman (program), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, Bart Testa, 2005

The seventh seal (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, Pauline Kael, 2005

Ingmar Bergman's magic lantern: life as art in retrospect (program note), Hopkins Center of Dartmouth College, Ulrike Rainer, 1988

The seventh seal (distributor materials), Janus Films, 1973

The isolated hero of Ingmar Bergman (article), Film Comment, Birgitta Steene, 1965

The seventh seal (article), Films and Filming, Peter Cowie, 1963

Det sjunde inseglet (review), Monthly Film Bulletin, J.M. (Monthly Film Bulletin), 1959

The seventh seal (review), University of California Press Journals Division. Film Quarterly, Colin Young, 1959

The seventh seal (review), Sight and Sound, Peter John Dyer, 1958

Displaying 10 of 16 publicly available documents.


View all The Seventh Seal documentation on CineFiles.