List Price: $39.95You Pay Only: $29.99 You Save: $9.96 (25%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9786305174080
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 6305174083
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 26, 1999
Running Time: 96 minutes
Sales Rank: 5588
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: October 13, 1958
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Editorial Review:
Description:
After a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight challenges Death to a fateful game of chess. More than forty years after its initial release, Ingmar Bergman's stunning allegory of man's apocalyptic search for meaning remains a textbook on the art of filmmaking and an essential building block in any collection. Criterion is proud to present The Seventh Seal in a pristine new transfer.
Amazon.com essential video:
Ingmar Bergman's 1956 film has been parodied by everyone from Woody Allen to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, but it remains one of the strangest and richest classics of world cinema. Max Von Sydow plays a knight returning from the Crusades to encounter an apocalyptic scenario inspired by the Book of Genesis. He plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot), sees a manacled witch, watches a band of flagellants go by--all of it foretelling an inevitable end to life. Unabashedly allegorical and lyrical and existing in a world unto itself, the film is enormously mesmerizing no matter what one thinks of the weighty meanings Bergman has attached to it all. The DVD release has English subtitles, audio commentary by critic Peter Cowie, theatrical trailer, and Bergman's filmography. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Knight asks questions on our behalf, gets no answers
Or maybe he does, but not until after Death leads him and some of his friends away with him.
In stark black and white, the story unfolds of a crusader, just back home in Sweden after ten years overseas, disillusioned and tired. He asks if there is a God or not, how he can believe when he can no longer make himself do it, and why he has to die, among other questions. Death does not answer anything directly but is also not presented as an evil force. The plague is more terrifying than Death is, in this situation.
If you like foreign films, existentialism, and black and white photography, you will enjoy this one.
Rating: - Death? A Reason to Believe? 14th Century Black Plague? Readon
Simple, cutting, to the point; Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" is a movie with a message, yes, a message that tells a story about a man and his chess board. The opponent, a pale man with a simple mission greets the knight Antonius Block in the 14th century Sweden; returning home to a disease ravaged land, yes the Black Plague has eaten its way to his home. Job I mean Block meets his match in this cunning story that was put together one summer with a bunch of friends of Ingmar and his girl friend Mary, the leading lady.
--Ross
Rating: - A film with brains
Of Ingmar Bergman's early black and white films, The Seventh Seal (1957) is my personal favorite. The story takes place in the middle of the 12th century. The black plague strikes Europe. A knight (Max von Sydow) and his squire, Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) return from the Crusades: the Crusades were a series of military campaigns by western European Christians to recover the Holy Land from the Saracen Muslims. The ocean delivers Antonius and his squire to a beach. The sky is half lit; the ocean is restless; the sun is almost under the horizon. A black bird--a scavenger--hangs over Antonius. He prays. But he and his squire are not alone. Nearby stands a tall figure in a long black robe. His face is pale and familiar--he is Death. Antonius is ready, but first he must challenge Death to a game of chess. If Death prevails, Antonius dies; if Antonius prevails, Death must allow him to live. Death agrees; his chess figures are black. The game begins.
Death and the chessboard vanish, the sun burns overhead, and once again, Antonius and his squire are alone on the beach. They find two stray horses and begin their inland journey. Deeper inland, they encounter symbols of death and danger. The clouds are light and unable to cool the sun. Antonius and his squire encounter the corpse of a monk. They stroll past an old rundown wagon. Three troubadours--Jof (Nils Pope), his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and Skat (Erik Strandmark)--sleep inside the wagon. They will travel to the Saint's Festival in Elsinor, ... Read More
Rating:  - Excellent
One of the things that separates a great artist from a lesser one is his ability to switch forms, themes, and the like, yet still imprint that unmistakable essence that lets a viewer know which artist they are dealing with immediately. Rarely has there been a greater and more vivid example of this reality than in comparing the two films Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman released in 1957: The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.
The first film, which is the subject of this essay, is stark, cosmic, spare, allegorical, and unremitting in its view of life, whereas Wild Strawberries is rich, personal, realistic (even if it uses symbolism), and open to several viable interpretations. Both films starred many of Bergman's `stock actors from the 1950s: Max Von Sydow as Knight Antonius Block, Bibi Andersson as Mia, the wife of Jof the jester (and utterly gorgeous, as opposed to mere cuteness in Wild Strawberries), and Gunnar Björnstrand as Block's squire Jöns, a pragmatic Sancho Panza to Block's spiritual Don Quixote. While Björnstrand is nominally the third lead in the film, behind Sydow and Bengt Ekerot as the personification of Death, in truth he is the dominant lead character, with by far the most, and the best, lines of dialogue. And while this film is an allegory loaded with symbolism, it is also a very simple story of a middle 14th Century knight's return to Sweden from the Crusades of the Middle Ages.... The acting is uniformly excellent. Sydow is utterly transparent as Block. We see every ... Read More
Rating: - Bergman tackles a topic of death
Made in 1956, in black and white, this film was one of the first ones ever to explore the topic of death. Fans of Ingmar Bergman know that director explored the meaning of death in his work. Born and raised in a strict and religious family, Bergman was intrigued about the mysteries of life and death, purpose of life and meaning of punishment. This film, placed in 14th century Sweden immediately after Crusades were over and Black Plague decimated the population of Europe, explores exploitative power of religion., pristhood and church, hardship of life for artists and actors and one knight's desire to elude death until he finds answers to his own questions about life and death; purpose of life; belief in God and other existential questions. In attempt to gain time, he bargains with death to buy in some more time while playing the game of chess. He is hoping that finding answers would give him hope on his life spent on earth and also help him save a young family from doom in hopes that perhaps the next generation will find a greater purpose. We learn that search is futile and that there is no barganing with death. We all receive death and our final hours differently just as we are all unique individuals and as such live our lives on earth. Some of us are ready and resigned to it, some scared, some fearful, others welcoming of death as a means of our begining of the new life. Just like life, death turns out what we make of it. It is unavoidable and part of every living being. It cannot be denied, ... Read More
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