Swedish cinema titan Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 breakthrough The Seventh Seal may have done more than any other film to popularize and demonize the notion of world cinema as the boutique of the cultural intelligentsia. Neither Bergman nor the Grim Reaper’s fault per se, especially when their collective Black Plague-set tumble into postmodern nausea is actually a great deal more laughable (in both senses) than Bergman’s most popular previous film, the morose and largely mirthless sex comedy Smiles of a Summer Night. The laughs are hard-earned, though, as the entire film showcases pre-enlightment souls coping with the finality of death, the meaninglessness of life, and the difficulty jesters have attracting an audience when organized religion puts on such a galvanizing show.
At the center of The Seventh Seal is the knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a Nordic tree stump of a man that’s been hollowed out by an infestation of repressed doubt, and his squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand). Both have just returned from the Crusades, or a decade spent telling everyone at sword’s length what a friend they’d better have in Jesus.
Antonius is approached by Death at the film’s onset, and uses the remaining running time stalling and unwittingly inviting a number of bystanders into his mortal wager: a trio of tomato-stained actors, a mute peasant girl, a monosyllabic sledge-man and his temptress wife, and, fleetingly, a pixie accused of unleashing the bubonic plague with witchcraft.
The game of chess between Antonius and Death that frames the film is a working meta-metaphor for Bergman’s own calculated cast of characters, carefully and with great futility maneuvering their way through a death-prone era. That game also results in one of the only two images (both transposed from medieval artwork) that have truly endured through the decades, along with the resulting dance-of-death tableau. Death and games, games and death.
The Seventh Seal, assisted by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer’s richly overexposed images, operates as though it contains the undiluted essence of life’s fueling dialectic formula. Occasionally it does, most notably in the terrifying arrival of the self-flagellants to a weak-willed village. But the road-trippers in Bergman’s follow-up, Wild Strawberries, achieve a far greater grace and clarity with only a fraction of the heavy lifting.
Image/Sound
The Criterion Collection debuted their 4K restoration of The Seventh Seal on the 2018 box set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, and its richer black levels and carefully cleaned frames represent a significant upgrade over the transfer on the distributor’s 2009 Blu-ray of the film. This UHD disc offers a further boost in native 4K. The transfer brings out even deeper contrasts between gray and black tones, revealing more detail in the darkest shots and crystal-clear textures in brighter scenes. There are almost no visible instances of print damage or debris. The two audio tracks—the original uncompressed Swedish mono and an English dub—have been ported over from the 2009 Blu-ray, and they’re similarly pristine, absent of any distortion and dropouts in their presentation of the film’s dialogue and sound effects.
Extras
The extras here have all been ported over from Criterion’s 2009 Blu-ray. The meatiest extras are the 2006 documentary Bergman Island, which covers Bergman’s life from his formative childhood under a deeply religious father to his work in both cinema and theater, and the commentary track by film scholar Peter Cowie, who unpacks the film’s heavy use of symbolism, its underrated comic streak, and more. Cowie crops up again in a 1998 audio interview with Max von Sydow about his filmography and the impact that his role in The Seventh Seal had on his career. The disc also includes a 1989 tribute to the film by Woody Allen for TCM, as well as a booklet essay by critic Gary Giddins, who stresses the seismic impact that the film’s international distribution had on elevating cinema to the status of modern art in America while arguing passionately for its enduring entertainment value outside its value as a historical object.
Overall
The Criterion Collection further improves upon their 2019 reissue of the most famous of all Ingmar Bergman’s films with a spotless 4K presentation.
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