The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) poster & wallpaper

Bengt Ekerot, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand

In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of travelling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a ...( read more  read more... )game of chess.

Flixster Users

94% liked it

38,015 ratings

Critics

93% liked it

45 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 36 min.

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

Release Date: February 16, 1957

Invite friends to see

Stats: 2,820 reviews

Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites
report incorrect info

Photos

Death chess game against death Death Dance of Death
Upload a Photo |

View All The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) Photos (4)

Your Rating


clear rating

Flixster Reviews (2,820)

  • SirPant
    November 11, 2009
    SirPant
    Questioning faith and pondering the certainty of death, Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece is hauntingly beautiful, poignant and one of the greatest films ever made.
  • ceWEBrity
    September 18, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    A lovely, thought-provoking film that avoids easy answers. Perhaps the most colorful and complex depiction of religion in film, The Seventh Seal casts Christianity as a scapegoat, a warmonger, a lightning rod, a pillar of unwavering support, and an utterly irrelevant trifle with ...( read more)a collection of elegantly assembled vignettes. As Ebert said, its stance on good and evil makes no exceptions, clearly asserting the division between the two. Many educated people would argue against this notion, but it's the film's simple view of morality and complex arguments against the manifestations thereof that make it so affecting. If the movie is a little over the top in ways that movies of the 50s usually were (monologues, bombastic musical scores, and the like), it compensates with a stirring cinematographic presentation and surprisingly elegant performances.

    Deserving of its classic status.
  • ohagankieran
    July 26, 2009
    ohagankieran
    Ingmar Bergman's dark masterpiece effortlessly sees off the revisionists and the satirists; it is a radical work of art that reaches back to scripture, to Cervantes and to Shakespeare to create a new dramatic idiom of its own. It was released 50 years ago, but it's as fresh as a ...( read more)glass of ice-cold water. Max von Sydow and Gunnar Björnstrand are the ascetic Crusader knight and his cynical squire who return from the wars after 10 years to find their country ravaged with plague and the population panicking about the coming apocalypse. The movie fiercely addresses itself to the agony of belief, the need to believe in a God who remains silent, mysterious, absent. It is a work of art that grabs the audience by the lapels, believers and unbelievers alike, and demands not answers, exactly, but an acknowledgement that this is the most important question, the only question: why does anything exist at all? Even after half a century, The Seventh Seal is an untarnished gold-standard of artistic and moral seriousness.
  • her69eyes
    June 27, 2009
    her69eyes
    "The Seventh Seal" is one of those special movies that seems completely familiar to people all across the world, whether they've seen it or not. It's been completely embedded into our collective conscience through decades of praise, imitation, and parody. Released in 1957, this i...( read more)s perhaps the most beloved film of prolific Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, a man who made deeply personal films about his insecurities, fears, and horrific memories. It stood alone in it's time as an unflinching philosophical debate on the existence of God and what waits for us after death. For material so grim, however, Bergman was also capable of making the film endlessly fascinating and entertaining.

    After fighting for ten years in the Crusades, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire, Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand), return home to Sweden and find their country ridden with the plague. On the seashore, Antonius is confronted by Death (Bengt Ekerot), a figure with a bald pale face and long black robes. Before Death takes him away, Antonius proposes a challenge: a game of chess. Death accepts, and the terms are set - should Antonius win, he gets to keep his life. This, however, isn't so much a method of survival as it is a stall for time, a much needed reprieve which will allow Antonius to overcome his insecurities about faith and destiny.

    Meanwhile, we meet a troupe of traveling entertainers - the impish musician, Jof (Nils Poppe); his devoted wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson); and the repulsive Skat (Erik Strandmark). Skat runs off with a blacksmith's wife (Inga Gill), leaving Jof to be humiliated and threatened at the hands of her insecure husband, Plog (Ake Fridell). Antonius and Jons meet up with the entertainers and travel to Antonius' castle as the game between he and death approaches it's end.

    Because "The Seventh Seal" has it's reputation as an endlessly bleak film, it's easy to overlook the amount of wit and humor in the dialogue. To contrast the beautiful yet grim poetry of Antonius' monologues, squire Jons acts as a clown. He teases his companions, and forms a relationship with Plog through his pessimistic insights on women ("Best to kill them all while the fun lasts!").

    Only certain films contain sequences it's audience will never forget, and "The Seventh Seal" has atleast half a dozen of them. I was underwhelmed when I first saw it, but revisiting it after familiarizing myself with more of Bergman's library was beneficial to my understanding and appreciation of the film. Although I still have reservations regarding the highly contrasting tones (the scenes with Jons and Plog in particular), it's impossible to overlook the pitch-perfect acting, dialogue, and cinematography. It's not my favorite of Bergman's works, but it grows on me more by the day - it's a film without boundaries, one that broadens on each revisit.
  • 76Majikat
    March 12, 2009
    76Majikat
    Although I can partly see the appeal to this popular film, I have to admit (I know I won?t be popular for this) I found a fair bit of this film quite boring. Having heard this film, so many times talked of with high regard ? I feel I?ve missed something!
  • ElCochran90
    November 17, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "If all is imperfect in this imperfect world, then love is most imperfect in its perfect imperfection."

    DET SJUNDE INSEGLET (1957)


    Director: Ingmar Bergman
    Country: Sweden
    Genre: Drama / Fantasy
    Length: 96 minute...( read more)s

    Photobucket


    Undoubtedly, Ingmar Bergman is one of the most genius, brilliant, allegoric, symbolic, complex and intelligent auters in the entire history of cinema. He was the one who helped Swedish cinema to rise out of the blue and acquire a characteristic style of its own, but it was in the year of 1957 when he received complete international attention through two of his first and most financially successful films: Det Sjunde Inseglet and Smultronstället (1957). Det Sjunde Inseglet immediately belongs to the most superior category of cinema. Its extraordinary inventiveness, visual style and apocalyptic perspective has been several times imitated, but never duplicated. Never before had cinema questioned the true essence of life, the existence of God and the negative consequences of religion towards its society when seen as the opium of the masses in such a straightforward manner. With an extraordinary cast that includes the Swedish cinema legends Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot and Gunnar Björnstrand, not to mention one of the scariest and most sensational antagonists ever portrayed in celluloid, Det Sjunde Inseglet has the power to shatter the already established code of ethics, to attack and criticize the monstrous consequences of misleading religion and event to modify the perspective towards life itself.

    A man named Antonius Block and his squire return to their homeland from the Crusades only to find the country completely devastated by the infamous Black Plague. In case this wasn't enough, Block has an encounter with Death who tells him that his time is already up. With the mere and obvious purpose of buying time, Block challenges Death to a game of chess that will ultimately decide the fate of the knight while he is given the chance to return to his wife after ten years and to question the meaning of life, the senselessness of death and the very existence of God. Director Ingmar Bergman was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival of 1957, which unfairly lost against William Wyler for his film Friendly Persuasion (1956). However, Bergman won the Jury Special Prize, which tied with Andrzej Wajda's Kanal (1957). He also won a Silver Ribbon for Best Director - Foreign Film at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in the year of 1961.

    The title Det Sjunde Inseglet is a direct reference towards the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelations of The Holy Bible, citing the text during the first minutes and just before the shocking, implicit ending. To cite such literary source may imply a context of apocalyptic perdition and existential confusion. The character of Antonius Block, masterly interpreted by Max von Sydow, would be completely remade in Andrey Tarkovsky's timeless, religious masterpiece Andrey Rublyov (1966). He is a man whose faith in God is suddenly shattered into pieces because of the catastrophic environment that always surrounded him. Nonetheless, it is this same environment the one that starts to build and ultimately experience a highly religious way of life. Chapels are being constructed while people suffer a destructive plague which origins remained unknown by that time. The easiest and most logical explanation such degraded and increasingly violent society found for such tragedy was the very plague being a direct punishment of God for the sins of the human being. And so begins the personal journey of self-discovery of Block exactly at the time when, ironically, death has already assured its victory.

    Det Sjunde Inseglet possesses an extraordinary cinematographic work by Gunnar Fischer. The camera catches and consequently attracts all of the symbols and elements that beautifully decorate the mysterious and unpredictable development of the plot. From the vast ocean to the interior of the chapels and the breathtaking landscapes through which a group of unusually funny travelling players go through, Block starts to gather pieces of a possible meaning of life that may acquire a more significant meaning if rather strong emotional connections start to be worked on. It is interesting how, throughout decades of moviemaking, directors have given a somewhat surreal and symbolic connotation when travelling players are used as either main or secondary characters. In this case, they serve the mere function of the protagonists' epiphany. One of them swears to have visions of the Virgin Mary while Block is seeing Death, so they could be interpreted as the counterpart of an imminent and unavoidable fate. Despite its relatively short running time, enough character development is offered, visionary sequences, partial surrealism and religious imagery is offered in order to magically expand it. Bergman's direction is absolutely phenomenal and instead of mistakenly resorting to exaggerated grandiloquence, he decided to treat the story with such delicacy that one may even feel that it must be analyzed like the tenderest physical features of a rose.

    Det Sjunde Inseglet may also be subject to an escapist analysis. It is an essay on the easily corrupted soul and the most negative outcomes when external facts utterly deteriorate any possible optimistic perspective. Its existentialist subject matter may ultimately lead to either a depressing reaction from the audience or to a cathartic one. Bergman's ethereal and heavenly screenplay, which was also based on his play, contains outstandingly surprising and hidden layers of wisdom. The most typical and somewhat ridiculous faults of the human being are contrasted with what seems to be the end of mankind... or so they perceive it. It also pays a strong attention to detail, from having conversations of the importance of family relationships to the normally devastating hardships of failed romances. The performances are phenomenal, from a comical theatre actor to an idealist, violent, but undeniably charming squire. The film slowly reveals several moments of brilliance, like if the screenplay allowed a gorgeous piece of art to blossom under the influence irradiated by the power of darkness. Such plot is remarkably unpredictable, thus enhancing the power of the final conclusion: eternal wandering and never-ending doom. The philosophical material of the film is overabundant and it has the sheer capacity of strengthening the faith in every single religious man, not to mention a possible questioning of the atheists' point of view and take on life.

    Ingmar Bergman has achieved to create one of the best films of all time, but the description doesn't end there. It has been subject to multiple references and critical discussions about the ideas depicted, and although its temporary controversy and its depressing content may pretend to be spiritually dangerous, Det Sjunde Inseglet is arguably the most original and visionary adaptation of the Book of Revelations that introduced the condemnation to every single non-believer person. The character of the Grim Reaper, of course, is not real. It is an illusion of our hopeless attempts to achieve redemption because of our past actions with brand new ones. If we make a list of the things that remain at the end, we would be definitely shocked to see that if such things can be written down, they would be negative and disastrous.

    100/100
  • TioBradski
    October 27, 2009
    TioBradski
    Why aren't the first six seals available on DVD?
  • sagapart12
    October 10, 2009
    sagapart12
    Good. I enjoyed the main character quite a bit and really enjoyed the philosophical bent of things. A bit slow at points, and probably that's just me dating myself.
  • marioehrler
    September 20, 2009
    marioehrler
    When it comes to deciding the forefathers of emotional, psychological cinema that deals with potently devastating topics, one of the films that definitely comes up is Ingmar Bergman's utter masterpiece "Det sjunde inseglet". We begin by seeing it as a small, independent film from...( read more) Europe that may be interesting to observe if only for the culture and the obvious linguistic differences. By the end of the last minute, we can't believe how such a seemingly small film has been able to move us, and how it has been able to force us into thinking about heavy and potentially disturbing topics that we've all come to wonder about at some point of our lives...and it does so with such precision and searing accuracy, that we wonder how we couldn't have noticed such a gem before.

    The film deals with a 14th century crusader (Max Von Sydow) who's returning from the Holy Land after many years of endless battle, and on his way home, he encounters the Angel of Death on a long-forgotten beach. Death has, obviously, come to claim him at last, as He has been known to do so for quite a while, what with the Plague finishing off most of Europe with the pest. This particular crusader, an important and intelligent man, decides to challenge Death in a game of chess: he forestalls his demise until the game is over, and if he wins death will move one and let him live for many more years. If Death wins...well, you'll see.

    As the crusader fights an endless game of chess with Death, he travels with his faithful but constantly reproaching squire back to his castle. On the way, they meet a number of interesting characters that help (or, actually, make up) the plot of the film. Each character embodies a different take on the religious aspect of the Dark Ages, and provides, each in his/her own way, a particular point of view on the themes of death, the afterlife, and moral correct-ness.

    The crusader himself has doubts about this, doubts that never let him sleep and that are troubling his existence: What is there in the afterlife? Is there a God and a Devil? Is there even an afterlife or is there simply nothingness once you die? Death is, naturally, vague about these topics and refuses to relinquish any information as he plays chess with the crusader, but the characters he meets provide their own hypotheses to these questions and add to his infinite wisdom. Our crusader decides that he will die only until he has corrected some wrongs in his life and, more importantly, until he has performed a good deed that will finally make his existence on earth valuable.

    But these are very difficult questions to be answered, and Ingmar Bergman makes a point of heightening the difficulty by placing the moral and emotional struggles smack down the middle ages and their obscurely slovenly society. The dialogue and reflective monologues from the characters establish the ideas that torment the characters, and the images that are presented heighten the intensity of the topics (unflinchingly) to astronomical heights, involving the viewer not only in the story and development of the film, but on the director's point and art as well.

    The images seen are some of the most famous and remembered in all of cinematic history; they're short episodes the characters witness, and they're burned into the viewer's mind forever: a procession of martyrs who travel around the country in self-flagellation and pleading for God's forgiveness; a woman who has consorted with the devil and has her hands and feet stoned and broken, and is finally burned at the stake; a poor and kind-hearted juggler who dances like a bear to save his life from an ammoral and sodomite crowd; the Virgin Mary walking with her naked infant in a meadow; a joyous picnic between newfound friends (the scene that, I believe, anchors the point of the film and upsets the general angst and "normalized" horror the rest of the film presents); and, more importantly, the scene where the crusader confesses himself to Death, exposing in a very well-organised monologue the pain and insecurity humans feel towards nothingness and their man-made need to believe in a God that gives sense to our trajectory in earth and our possible entrance to the Next World.

    I won't go into analyzing the characters the crusader meets. Even though they're crucial to a thorough examination of how the moral dilemma is augmented and supported, I'd have to discuss a large list of spoilers that would do nothing to the reader's understanding and enjoyment of the film. Let's just say that, without even seeming to try, these characters move precariously through these dark and dangerous times, sometimes understanding the supernatural world they live in, sometimes overwhelmed by it's implications and finally being able to do nothing about it.

    The screenplay is an obvious masterpiece, but so is the photography (which is all-inclusive and treats the scenes with a special ominous foreboding that keeps us on the edge of our seat every single minute), and so is the acting (which, even though is melodramatic to a large extent, always remains balanced and adequate).

    This is a difficult film to try and explain. It was treated with an exhorbitant amount of acuteness and love, and the topics were so well-presented and developed, that I could write page after page about what I learned, what I think, and how each minute of the film could only advance my wonderment. But, thankfully, it is not my job to detail my analysis, but to review the film...and, in conclusion, I find it to be a perfectly made movie that will always be embedded into my memory. See it at all costs!

    Rating: 4 stars out of 4!!
  • AbsoluteEquinox
    September 5, 2009
    AbsoluteEquinox
    No other movie has spiritually moved me as much as this one.

View All The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) Reviews

Critic Reviews

January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

This is an uncompromising film, regarding good and evil with the same simplicity and faith as its hero. full review

View more The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet)" !

Post A Comment | View All Comments

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

All Rotten Tomatoes content is used under license from Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, and the Tomatometer are the trademarks of Incfusion Corporation, d/b/a Rotten Tomatoes, a subsidiary of IGN Entertainment, Inc.

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • Solyaris (Solaris)
    Solyaris (Solaris) (100%)
  • Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari)
    Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (100%)
  • The Masque of the Red Death
    The Masque of the Red Death (100%)
  • Andrei Rublev
    Andrei Rublev (100%)

More Movies like The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet)

Facts

No facts approved yet. Be the first

The Seventh Seal ... : Watch Free on TV

The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) Trivia

The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inse... Trivia

  • What is the name of the knight in the 1957 Swedish movie "Det sjunde inseglet" (The Seventh Seal)?  Answer »
More The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) Trivia

Movie Quizzes

No quizzes for The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet). Want to create one?

Video Clips

Upload a Video |

All The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) Videos

Meet Other Fans

Add The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?