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A film so famous its imagery has seeped into the collective unconscious (and has spawned countless parodies), THE SEVENTH SEAL exerts primal power as a supreme example of the cinema of symbolism, and as a brooding allegory of what was once known as “man's fate.” Max von Sydow plays Antonius Blok, a knight who returns home after a decade fighting in the Holy Crusades of the fourteenth century. His country, ravaged by the black plague, is in a frenzy of self-flagellation and witch hunts. When Death comes to claim the knight, he attempts a gambit: he challenges the grim reaper to a game of chess, hoping to gain enough time to overcome his spiritual doubt before he perishes. The film's darkness and starkness are not just aesthetic choices derived from the gloomy austerity of medieval paintings; they were dictated by Bergman's small budget and short shooting schedule. (His reminiscence, Images: My Life in Film , reveals that the famous Dance of Death that ends the film was improvised in a matter of minutes.) “A magically powerful film - the story seems to be playing itself out in a medieval present. . . . The actors' faces, the aura of magic, the ambiguities, and the riddle at the heart of the film all contribute to its stature” (Pauline Kael).
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