The Seventh Seal
Det sjunde inseglet
Writer
& Director ~ Ingmar Bergman
1957,
Sweden
Stars ~ Max
von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe
His seventeenth film, Ingmar Bergman’s
‘The Seventh Seal’ was adapted from his own play ‘The Wood Painting’
(‘Trämålning’,1953/1954) which he wrote for an actor’s workshop as director
of the Malmö City Theatre. The title ‘The Seventh Seal’ refers to a
passage from the Book of Revelation: "And
when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about
the space of half an hour." (Revelation 8:1) In
Bergman’s original play, Death is represented by silence, but Death here is
personified by Bengt Ekerot, coming for a knight on his way home from The
Crusades. But the knight, played by Max Von Sydow, challenges Death to a game
of chess for a delay until he can find meaning.
The influences on the film range
from Picasso, Shakespeare, the frescoes at Härkeberga church and his upbringing
in a devout Christian household, his father being a rector. A religiously
themed film running on symbolism, ‘The Seventh Seal’ is the tonal opposite
of Jodorowdy’s ‘The Holy Mountain’, which feels like a film made by a
very naughty boy. Instead, Bergman’s vision is playful, clear, pristine,
austere, mature, aided by the high contrast black and white. The seriousness of
intent and purposeful staginess is the stuff of endless parodies, but there is
a confidence here and a surprising humanity that immediately disarms. There’s a
lot of lolling around in love and contemplation. The tone is that of a fairy
tale being treated to the veracity of a historical drama, although its historical
accuracy is erratic: for example, The Crusades were before The Black Death, and
witch persecutions in Sweden came much later. But its strength as allegory is
not in doubt, and Bergman’s magic touch is in its surety in making such
potentially humourless premise easy entertainment.
Characters speak to one another in
existential angst and contemplation, adrift in a world of plague casual
misogyny, piety, doubt and stalked by Death. A frivolous and somewhat bawdy
mobile theatre is interrupted by a procession of self-flagellating religious
zealots that only pause to tell the crowd they are all going to die. It is
perhaps telling that the one character without dimension is the hectoring
preacher. And yet it is anything but a dark film, offering instead bright black
and white and a lightness familiar from Bergman’s earlier amusements such as ‘Smiles
of a Summer Night’ and ‘Summer with Monika’. It makes a pit stop for
a comic sequence where the blacksmith confronts his wayward wife and her lover
the actor, for instance, more like his earlier work, but still has dark gags of
Death putting the work in by chopping down a tree and cheating at chess. Interviewed
by Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show, 1978, Bergman spoke of how he was very
scared of Death, how the film acted as “medicine” for this, and spoke of
Death’s appearance as a clown or a priest. Indeed, Death is mistaken for a
priest a few times.The squire Jöns (Gunnar
Björnstrand) is almost a self-aware character, almost meta in his approach to
others and the crisis of Faith all around him. In that sense, he acts as an
audience guide through this doomed landscape. And you have actors synonymous
with Bergman, for he had a reliable and loyal troupe of actors and crew. Max
Von Sydow has a natural, unmatched gravitas but without condescension, which is
perfect for the existential crisis of Block the knight. Bibi Andersson was
Bergman’s lover at the time and instrumental in convincing to cash in his long
stint as a director to produce this project. She provides all the natural,
earthy warmth acting as a counterbalance to all the “I should murder my wife”
humour.
‘The Seventh Seal’ is
considered a benchmark film that contributed to cementing if not creating the idea
of the Art Film after its screening in Cannes in 1957. Bergman’s questions
about Faith and mortality are persistent and open to the subjective biases of
the individual, right through his subsequent films to varying degrees. That
they serve both believers and non-believers – the knight, for example, is
evidently struggling with sensing he’s lost Faith – is a sign of the
complexity, generosity and universality of his treatment of these themes. These
questions are always tied in with theatre and performance and often the
trimmings of horror, from ‘Hour of the Wolf’ and others like ‘Wild
Strawberries’. I always enjoy the fact that I never know if he is going to
drop in a little horror motif. Even ‘Fanny and Alexander’ begins with
Death casually walking across a room. And here, Jöns’ early encounter with a
corpse is a full-on genre moment. From the unsettling flagellation parade to
the beautiful coastal vistas, from the horror of witch burning and robbing corpses
to the broad “but my wife” comedy and the wild strawberries communion, Von
Sydow’s knight rages philosophically and carves his way through all the tonal
fluctuations.
In the end, the knight finds no
meaning from Death – who declares himself “unknowing”, so no answers there –
but rather, meaning in moments of mercy and acceptance. This is enough because,
of course, Death will always win in the end. A film that remains enigmatic,
humanely philosophical and resolutely positive, despite the subject matter.
