The Seventh Seal (1957)

“A magically powerful film.” — Pauline Kael

“The directness of The Seventh Seal is its strength: This is an uncompromising film, regarding good and evil with the same simplicity and faith as its hero.” — Roger Ebert

SYNOPSIS

Swedish maestro Ingmar Bergman ascended to the summit of European art cinema with this immediately canonized classic whose chessboard, hooded Death, and stark medieval landscapes have become virtually synonymous with the very idea of the art film. Returning from the Crusades to a Sweden ravaged by plague, disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot) and challenges him to a game of chess, hoping to postpone the inevitable long enough to find some certainty about God, mortality, and the meaning of his existence. Bergman transforms the Middle Ages into an arena for distinctly modern anxieties, confronting spiritual doubt and the apparent silence of the universe with imagery of extraordinary elemental force. Yet for all its reputation as a monument of existential despair, The Seventh Seal is also earthy, funny, and unexpectedly tender, particularly in its affection for a troupe of traveling players whose pleasures (food, companionship, performance, love) offer a vital counterweight to Block’s metaphysical torment. Bleakness and sensuality, allegory and everyday life coexist throughout Bergman’s enduring opus, in which the unknowability of death only makes the fleeting pleasures of being alive seem more precious.

The Seventh Seal screens in its original Swedish language with English subtitles on a rare original 16mm print, courtesy of our friends at Kinonik in Portland, ME.