The Seventh Seal (1958)

Perfect cast and a good story

Good movie but grossly overrated

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Maybe, a parable. dark, bitter, fascinating. but, from childhood, when I saw it for the first time, to present, I discovered it as a sort of revelation of the roots of life. remembering the traits of Middle Age , the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Bruegel, the themes of Bergman's cinema. and the right perspective about life, choices, expectations and the true answer to the near reality. for long time, the scene of chess play was the only who I considered significant. not exactly as a game between Death and Knight but as the build of the fundamental answer of old fears. a film who could be reduced at a long chain of symbols, cultural references, myths, legends. in fact, only a question. about life and faith and fear and happiness and decisions.

The film begins, and the sky rises on us, and two people fall near the beach, and while in this silent silence there is a terrifying guest coming to them soon, comes the guest quickly and suddenly, ask the hero of the film Antonius Black who are you? I answer death! This is how the film starts with a shocking and breathtaking scene, a scene that critics have rated as the best opening in the history of cinema. Not surprisingly, they brought together people and death together. The film revolves around the return of the crusader Antonius Block to his country, Which leads people to believe that the resurrection has approached and became imminent, and then goes to Antonius great battle with the self in an attempt to search for answers about life and man, and the Great God! My story with this film is long, and it started two years ago. At that time I was bored to the limit of those classic and traditional Hollywood and European films. I was looking for films about life, dramatic human and philosophical films. , I saw the film for the first time and did not like it, I grew up in Bergman Cinema and watched its greatest movies and then became very familiar with the ideas and films of this man, I saw the film again, and it became the second best film I have ever seen! , This is the Bergman Cinema, the films of this man are different from all the films, and my words are only evidence that Bergman Cinema and others contain a great deal of ideas and novels deep, and certainly will not appreciate his work in just one view. I love Bergman,

Positive things: Well acted, nice beginning, great performance by ''Death'', interesting plot, good initial idea, good medieval atmosphere.Negative things: Boring as hell, not well executed idea, almost like random scenes that are not connected. Chess game seems like central theme, but it gets distracted during the film with other events, so you can see maybe 3 min of total game and dialogue during the game. I expected that to be the main thing, the main philosophical talking about all the things that movie suppose to be about. You can call it art, whatever.. Maybe I am too dumb to understand. But in my humble opinion this is just an attempt to make an art. Nice attempt to make Death figure in a man-like form, I get that part, personification of death is a good idea.. But nothing more that that here to see.

Ingmar Bergman's career of brooding cinematic successes was practically borne here, in an amazing study of doomsday travelers in 14th century Sweden confronting their mortality. In the age of the Black Plague, the streets are filled with pagans, drunks, artisans, performers, religious zealots and volunteer witch-burners; a knight and his squire, home from the Crusades, stop at the ocean, where a most benign Grim Reaper tells the knight he has been at his side for a long while. They engage in a winner-take-all game of chess, though the knight is just biding time to save the friends he has made from Death's clutches. The barbarism and cruelty aside, writer-director Bergman does show a streak of pithy black humor, resulting in some amazing sequences (such as the juggler cut down from a tree by Death and his scythe). The overlay of brutality in the name of Christianity, the torment of faith and the heavy symbolism are often tough to wade through, while the metaphor of the chess game has left the picture open for parody. Still, "The Seventh Seal" is a must-see film, matching its iconic imagery with themes of the eternal struggle. *** from ****