The Seventh Seal

''The Seventh Seal'' ( sv, Det sjunde inseglet) is a 1957 Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death ( Bengt Ekerot), who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play ''Wood Painting''. The title refers to a passage 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 the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour". Here, the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God", which is a major theme of the film.

''The Seventh Seal'' is considered a classic of world cinema, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. It established Bergman as a world-renowned director, containing scenes which have become iconic through homages, critical analysis, and parodies.

Plot

Disillusioned knight Antonius Block and his cynical squire Jöns return from the Crusades to find the country ravaged by the plague. The knight encounters Death, whom he challenges to a chess match, believing he can survive as long as the game continues. The game they start continues throughout the story.

The knight and his squire pass a caravan of actors: Jof and his wife Mia, with their infant son Mikael and actor-manager Jonas Skat. Waking early, Jof has a vision of Mary leading the infant Jesus, which he relates to a smilingly-disbelieving Mia.

Block and Jöns visit a church where a fresco of the ''Danse Macabre'' is being painted, and the squire chides the artist for colluding in the ideological fervor that led to the crusade. In the confessional, Block tells the priest he wants to perform "one meaningful deed" after what he now sees as a pointless life. Upon revealing to him the chess tactic that will save his life, the knight discovers that it is actually Death with whom he has been speaking. Leaving the church, Block speaks to a young woman condemned to be burned at the stake for consorting with the devil. He believes she will tell him about life beyond death, only to find that she is insane.

In a deserted village, Jöns saves a mute servant girl from being raped by Raval, a theologian who ten years earlier persuaded the knight to join the Crusades and is now a thief. Jöns vows to destroy his face if they meet again. Jöns kidnaps the servant girl and they go into town, where the actors are performing. There, Skat is enticed away for a tryst by Lisa, wife of the blacksmith Plog. The stage show is interrupted by a procession of flagellants led by a preacher who harangues the townspeople.

At the town's inn, Raval manipulates Plog and other customers into intimidating Jof. The bullying is broken up by Jöns, who slashes Raval's face. The knight and squire are joined by Jof's family and a repentant Plog. Block enjoys a picnic of milk and wild strawberries that Mia has gathered and declares, "I'll carry this memory between my hands as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk... And it will be an adequate sign — it will be enough for me."

Block now invites Plog and the actors to shelter from the plague in his castle. When they encounter Skat and Lisa in the forest, she returns to Plog, while Skat fakes a remorseful suicide. As the group moves on, Skat climbs a tree to spend the night, but Death appears beneath and cuts down the tree.

Meeting the condemned woman being drawn to execution, Block asks her to summon Satan so he can question him about God. The girl claims she has done so, but the knight only sees her terror and gives her herbs to take away her pain as she is placed on the pyre.

They encounter Raval, stricken by the plague. Jöns stops the servant girl from uselessly bringing him water, and Raval dies alone. Jof tells his wife that he can see the knight playing chess with Death and decides to flee with his family, while Block knowingly keeps Death occupied.

As Death states "No one escapes me", Block knocks the chess pieces over but Death restores them to their place. On the next move, Death wins the game and announces that when they meet again, it will be the last time for all. Death then asks Block if he achieved the "meaningful deed" he wished to accomplish and the knight replies that he has.

Block is reunited with his wife and the party shares a final supper, interrupted by Death's arrival. The rest of the party then introduce themselves, and the mute servant girl greets him with "It is finished."

Jof and his family have sheltered in their caravan from a storm, which he interprets as the Angel of Death passing by. In the morning, Jof's second sight allows him to see the knight and his companions being led away over the hillside in a wild Dance of Death.

Cast

* Gunnar Björnstrand – Jöns, squire
* Bengt Ekerot – Death
* Nils Poppe – Jof
* Max von Sydow – Antonius Block, knight
* Bibi Andersson – Mia, Jof's wife
* Inga Landgré – Karin, Block's wife
* Åke Fridell – Blacksmith Plog
* Inga Gill – Lisa, blacksmith's wife
* Erik Strandmark – Jonas Skat
* Bertil Anderberg – Raval, the thief
* Gunnel Lindblom – Mute girl
* Maud Hansson – Witch
* Gunnar Olsson – Albertus Pictor, church painter
* Anders Ek – The Monk
* Benkt-Åke Benktsson – Merchant
* Gudrun Brost – Maid
* Lars Lind – Young monk
* Tor Borong – Farmer
* Harry Asklund – Inn keeper
* Ulf Johanson – Jack's leader (uncredited)

Production

Ingmar Bergman originally wrote the play ''Trämålning'' (''Wood Painting'') in 1953 / 1954 for the acting students of Malmö City Theatre. Its first public performance, which he directed, was on radio in 1954. He also directed it on stage in Malmö the next spring, and in the autumn it was staged in Stockholm, directed by Bengt Ekerot, who would later play the character Death in the film version.Det sjunde inseglet – Pressreaktion & Kommentar Svensk Filmografi
(in Swedish). Swedish Film Institute. Retrieved on 17 August 2009.

In his autobiography, ''The Magic Lantern'', Bergman wrote that "''Wood Painting'' gradually became ''The Seventh Seal'', an uneven film which lies close to my heart, because it was made under difficult circumstances in a surge of vitality and delight." The script for ''The Seventh Seal'' was commenced while Bergman was in the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm recovering from a stomach complaint. It was at first rejected by Carl-Anders Dymling, head of Svensk Filmindustri and Bergman was given the go-ahead for the project from Carl-Anders Dymling only after the success at Cannes of '' Smiles of a Summer Night''. Bergman rewrote the script five times and was given a schedule of only thirty-five days and a budget of $150,000. It was to be the seventeenth film he had directed.

All scenes except two were shot in or around the Filmstaden studios in Solna. The exceptions were the famous opening scene with Death and the Knight playing chess by the sea, and the ending with the dance of death, which were both shot at Hovs Hallar, a rocky, precipitous beach area in north-western Scania.Ingmar Bergman Face to Face – Shooting the film The Seventh Seal

In the ''Magic Lantern'' autobiography Bergman writes of the film's iconic penultimate shot: "The image of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was achieved at hectic speed because most of the actors had finished for the day. Assistants, electricians, and a make-up man and about two summer visitors, who never knew what it was all about, had to dress up in the costumes of those condemned to death. A camera with no sound was set up and the picture shot before the cloud dissolved."

Portrait of the Middle Ages

Medieval Sweden as portrayed in this movie includes creative anachronisms. The flagellant movement was foreign to Sweden, and large-scale witch persecutions only began in the 15th century. In addition, the main period of the Crusades is well before this era; they took place in a more optimistic period.

With regard to the relevancy of historical accuracy to a film that is heavily metaphorical and allegorical, John Aberth, writing in ''A Knight at the Movies'', holds

the film only partially succeeds in conveying the period atmosphere and thought world of the fourteenth century. Bergman would probably counter that it was never his intention to make an historical or period film. As it was written in a program note that accompanied the movie's premier "It is a modern poem presented with medieval material that has been very freely handled... The script in particular—embodies a mid-twentieth century existentialist angst... Still, to be fair to Bergman, one must allow him his artistic license, and the script's modernisms may be justified as giving the movie's medieval theme a compelling and urgent contemporary relevance... Yet the film succeeds to a large degree because it is set in the Middle Ages, a time that can seem both very remote and very immediate to us living in the modern world... Ultimately ''The Seventh Seal'' should be judged as a historical film by how well it combines the medieval and the modern."

Similarly defending it as an allegory, Aleksander Kwiatkowski in the book ''Swedish Film Classics'', writes

The international response to the film which among other awards won the jury's special prize at Cannes in 1957 reconfirmed the author's high rank and proved that ''The Seventh Seal'' regardless of its degree of accuracy in reproducing medieval scenery may be considered as a universal, timeless allegory.

Much of the film's imagery is 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.

Generally speaking, historians Johan Huizinga, Friedrich Heer and Barbara Tuchman have all argued that the late Middle Ages of the 14th century was a period of "doom and gloom" similar to what is reflected in this film, characterized by a feeling of pessimism, an increase in a penitential style of piety that was slightly masochistic, all aggravated by various disasters such as the Black Death, famine, the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and the Papal schism.Barbara Tuchman (1978).
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
'. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. This is sometimes called the crisis of the Late Middle Ages, and Tuchman regards the 14th century as "a distant mirror

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