The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection | Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot

The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection | Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot | Seventh Seal

DVDs:

The Seventh Seal -...

	The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot Criterion, 1999 average customer review:based on 180 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Love is the blackest of all plagues

Like a gloomy night swallowing the day, The Seventh Seal slowly engulfs you with its tragic implications and visions. Set upon a dark historical framework, it embarks on a haunting and unforgettable journey filled with philisophical and humanistic components.
Right from the start, you have the enigmatic knight being confronted by Death. In an effort to avoid his fatal grasp, he challenges Death to a game of chess. I think this was just a clever attempt by the knight to buy some time, delay the inevitable.
The story proceeds in a dismal fashion, although their are several humorous moments. The people of the region are constantly faced with the threats of plague, fear of witches, and questions of religous faith.
This is a remarkable piece of work. Completely mesmerizing. It's a complex and bewildering look into the boundaries of love, faith, and ultimately death. Any serious film collector needs to add this masterpiece to the collection.

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Seventh Seal

Once you have seen the Seventh Seal, you will never forget it as long as you live... and perhaps you will even think about it a lot towards the end of your life. Ingmar Bergman... Enough Said.

Hard to comment on

A few points. Jof and Maria represent Joseph and Mary --- but why Michael? I came across this poem: What is not will surely be/In the changed unchanging reign/Else the Actor on the Tree/Would loll at ease, miming pain/And counterfeit mortality. Edwin Muir, 1952. Could Bergman possibly have come across these lines --- in English? The subtitles ought to have been better translated: why did the translator substitute "The Devil" for "Death" in several cases? Misleading. Bergman tells us that the light suddenly falling on Raval, the corpse-robbing ex-monk who sent Block on the crusade ten years earlier, at the point when he dies in the forest, was a pure accident. A sort of miracle. Something I kept wondering was where Bergman found the theme for this allegory, or is it without precedent ? There is surely something of Durer's engraving "Ritter, Tod und Teufel" in it, as well as the delay of Death which is part of Goethe's "Faust", but the game of chess seems entirely Bergman's own. When I first saw it, about 50 years ago, I had a friend who was positively dumbstruck by the acting and simplicity of Nils Poppe. Poppe's career was remarkable. As a small child he was given away to a so-called "angel-maker" by his mother, in the full expectancy that he would be starved to death. But he cheated the Reaper, for a full lifetime.

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The Seventh Seal

I love ALL works by Ingmar Bergman. This film has been a favorite of mine for over 30 years!!! TTD

Although some details

such as the knight sleeping on pebbles in the opening scenes, are not exactly well-thought, the film is very good. It's set up as a medieval tale with all attributes of a tale, but it offers much more than a seemingly simple story. Bergman's symbolism fully blossoms here (his famous Death's dance, etc.) and the realism of the medieval scenes is visually striking and impressive. Also it's interesting to note, the characters of both the knight and the squire are of equal weight, sometimes acting nearly independently of one another instead of the squire being a supporting role, quite an unusual approach. The film is somewhat over-praised, probably because of being Bergman's first seriously acclaimed film in the US, but it certainly deserves most of the praise.

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