100 All-Time Films (To see the entire list, click here)
Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)
We go from Kurosawa’s perfection to another equally famous director’s masterpiece. Both oddly enough include a ‘seven’ in their title (maybe it IS lucky). Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish film, The Seventh Seal, is a major classic of world cinema. Bergman became world renowned because of the film and contains scenes often parodied nowadays.
The story begins with a journey by a medieval knight from the Crusades who encounters Death. He has come to take his life until the knight challenges Death to a game of chess in order to prolong his eventual demise. This movie is not strictly about the chess match as is most famously perceived. The title itself is based around a passage in the Book of Revelations; “And when the lamb had opened the Seventh Seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” (Revelation 8:1). The film revolves around many subjects, but none so strongly as the silence of God. The story takes place during despicable times of war and plague and the crux is that God is nowhere to be seen. Where is he during times of wrath?
This is most certainly an art film. Like Fellini’s 8 1/2 this film can be hard to wrap your head around - especially after first viewing - but the artistic beauty is clearly evident. Before this time, films were not given attention in schools as books were. The ‘art’ of film was growing and The Seventh Seal became a staple of film classes. Bergman himself became known as the first great auteur of Swedish cinema, a very well respected country for making films. Without The Seventh Seal, this would never have happened.
