The Seventh Seal (1957)

 Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal"

After the rousing global success of "Smiles of a Summer Night," the Swedish studio AB Svensk Filmindustri granted writer/director Ingmar Bergman free reign to make any films he wished with complete creative freedom. The first of these films that he wished to make was vastly different than his sex comedy "Smiles of a Summer Night." Rather, it was a film dealing with death. Bergman had decided to adapt one of his stage plays called "Wood Painting." The result, "The Seventh Seal," is considered a masterpiece by the filmmaker. Not only that, it is considered one of the greatest pieces of art in the 20th century. 

The film takes place in Medieval Sweden, as a knight, Antonius Block, along with his squire, Jons, return from the Crusades to find their country ravaged by the plague. Antonius encounters a personification of Death, a pale man wrapped in a hooded cloak. Along their journey, the two of them play chess with Antonius' life at stake. Along the way, the meet a caravan of actors. The company visit churches, taverns, deserted villages, and other locations as they muse about the nature of life and the terror of death. In the end, death comes knocking.

Since Bergman was a child, he was inundated with both faith and death. His father, a chaplain and rector, raised the household with an intense Christian upbringing. From the age of 6, Bergman would help the gardener carry corpses from the Royal Hospital Sophiahemmet where he father worked to the mortuary. Safe to say, Bergman from a very early age was surrounded by death, along with the philosophical and spiritual musings about death and life therefrom. 

In writing "The Seventh Seal," Bergman takes those lifelong inundations and translates them to the film screen, musing about death and even more intensely, the death of God. The film ponders why is God silent in the face of terror. At many times throughout the film, our protagonist Antonius tries desperately to hold on to his faith. However, as the film progresses, the utter silence of God causes immense spiritual turmoil for Antonius. 

However, Antonius isn't the only character with which we muse about the nature of death. In fact, every character approaches the subject differently. The whole film becomes a reflection of human nature and our own fascination with the subject entirely. In watching the film, I began to notice that all of the characters' behaviors seemed to extend from a connection to death: how we face it, how we try to occupy ourselves from thinking about it, how we create art from this knowledge, etc. The film is a philosophical tapestry of humanity's reconciliation to our tragic fates. It seems as though everything we do is in the knowledge and service of our eventual demise. We all deal with this knowledge in drastically different ways. This is made even more evident in the final scene of the film. As the personification of Death enters the house, all of the characters deal with him in different ways. Our knight Antonius, who has been attempting to commune with God all throughout the film, tries one final time to beg God for his word (God's silence is deafening). His squire, Jon, becomes angry. His wife, Karin, peacefully welcomes death into her home. The blacksmith and his wife begin to recount to death their personal affiliations in life. Finally, the mute girl, bows before death and smiles. All of the characters deal with death in their own respective ways.

The reception of the film was phenomenal. Right away, the film was recognized as a piece of film art that transcended simple entertainment. It had become something more, something elevated. Many were enraptured at how Bergman was able to muse about life, love, happiness, sorrow, death, etc. and compact these musings into a singular, philosophical work. As English author Melvyn Bragg writes, "somehow all of Bergman's own past, that of his father, that of his reading and doing and seeing, that of his Swedish culture, of his political burning and religious melancholy, poured into a series of pictures which carry that swell of contributions and contradictions so effortlessly that you could tell the story to a child, publish it as a storybook of photographs and yet know that the deepest questions of religion and the most mysterious revelation of simply being alive are both addressed." I felt this quote to be the most accurate view of the film, as I felt the utter quantity of a human life being poured into this work. It is a singular film and well suited for its time. The Jesuit publication "America" identifies it as having begun "a series of seven films that explored the possibility of faith in a post-Holocaust, nuclear age." How do we as a specifies continue with the Nietzschean concept of 'The Death of God?' What do we do in the face of so much terror and turmoil? 

After winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, director Ingmar Bergman became a globally known auteur. In fact, the film itself quickly became a standard for film, often referenced and imitated. As Oxford University Press's James Monaco notes in "How to Read Film," "The Seventh Seal" had a symbolism that was "immediately apprehensible to people trained in literary culture who were just beginning to discover the 'art' of film, and it quickly became a staple of high school and college literature courses...Unlike Hollywood 'movies,' 'The Seventh Seal' clearly was aware of elite artistic culture and thus was readily appreciated by intellectual audiences." Even beyond the intellectual consideration of the film in these echelons of higher education, the film was so integrated with global culture that its images and themes became parodied and imitated in pop culture itself. 

There are still a great many things that could be said about Bergman's masterpiece. All in all, the film now stands as a monument of cinema. It is endlessly recounted and parodied. Endlessly replicated and imitated. Endlessly discussed in film schools around the globe. However, "The Seventh Seal," as much of a zenith as it was, was not necessarily a zenith of Bergman's career. Bergman would go on to have equally powerful and influential films. However, you can't speak about Bergman and his films without "The Seventh Seal." This is also true about the art of cinema itself: you can't talk about cinema, its history, and its cultural and artistic reach without speaking about "The Seventh Seal."