The Magic Lantern of Ingmar Bergman: The Seventh Seal
March 13, 2025
Presented by The Swedish Club and Greg Olson Productions
The Magic Lantern of Ingmar Bergman
A noble medieval Knight (Max von Sydow) plays a game of chess with Death. He hopes to survive, but he also has a deeper strategy in mind. At the time of the film’s making Existentialism was in the philosophical/cultural air, a truth-seeking state of mind Bergman was born with. Bergman’s discovery actor Max von Sydow becomes an international star.
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Thursday, March 13, 2025
Queen of film critics pauline Kael said that The Seventh Seal "seems to be playing out in a medieval present." For Bergman in the 1950s, “What attracted me was the idea of people traveling through the downfall of civilization and culture, perhaps giving birth to new songs.” In the previous decade the dark side of human nature had stunningly run rampant, reaping nuclear destruction and spawning the Holocaust. How could we rational beings let things go so far? As existentialist Albert Camus said, “We now know ourselves, what we are capable of.” Able to commit horrors, but also able to choose. God’s existence was now doubted, we can define ourselves by our actions, so choose the true and the good. In The Seventh Seal the idea of an existential “meaningful act” was on Bergman’s mind as he presents Antonius (the majestic Max von Sydow), a weary Christian Knight returning home from the far-off Crusades. He finds that cruelty and irrationality now reign: the Black Plague kills bodies, witchcraft and religious fanaticism warp minds and souls. What is there to live for? Yet Antonius’s breath and heartbeat are sacred. When pale Death in black (Bengt Ekerot) arrives to take him, Antonius bets his future existence on a game of chess on a brooding sea shore, one of Bergman’s most iconic images. In addition to gaming for his personal survival, Antonius may be strategizing on behalf of something beyond himself: two traveling players (Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson) and their infant, and the grace of wild strawberries. Cahiers du Cinema Top Ten Films.
—Greg Olson
- Director: Ingmar Bergman
- Principal Cast: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot, Ake Fridell, Inga Gill
- Year: 1956
- Running Time: 96 min.
- Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman
- Cinematographers: Gunnar Fischer
- Editors: Lennart Wallenj
- Music: Erik Nordgren
- International Sales: Svensk Filmindustri