A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #11: Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal.

1 And when he had opened the sev­enth seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Rev. 8:1

There is lit­tle I can say about The Sev­enth Seal that has not been said before. I will say that I love the sound of Swedish and the way that I can almost under­stand it at times. I will say that I love the crys­tal cin­e­matog­ra­phy and the way the light­ing is nearly its own char­ac­ter, so strong is its pres­ence on the screen. And I will talk a lit­tle about the motifs that I noticed this sec­ond time that I’ve watched the film.

Silence is the most notice­able theme, estab­lished quite early with the open­ing quo­ta­tion from the book of Rev­e­la­tion and then rein­forced when the appear­ance of Death mutes the sound of break­ers rolling onto the shore of Swe­den. It con­tin­ues, but is not present through the entire film. Bergman insists, at first at least, that silence says more than speech if you lis­ten cor­rectly. Wit­ness Jōns account of his inter­ac­tion with the corpse of a plague victim:

KNIGHT
Well, did he show you the way?

JŌNS
Not exactly.

KNIGHT
What did he say?

JŌNS
Nothing.

KNIGHT
Was he a mute?

JŌNS
No, sir, I wouldn’t say that. As a mat­ter of
fact, he was quite eloquent.

The knight Anto­nius Block’s dis­re­gard for this silence or his squire’s smar­tass com­ments shows another sort of deaf­ness, to speak mixaphor­i­cally, the inabil­ity to hear what is under one’s nose. Jōns is the truth-​speaker in the film, almost a Dos­to­evk­sian holy fool, except for the thick skin of cyn­i­cism that he has gained as a vet­eran of ten years of cru­sad­ing. He has no illu­sions regard­ing the absur­dity of his exis­tence and thinks of reli­gion as noth­ing more than enter­tain­ing folklore.

But Block refuses to give in to look into Nieztsche’s abyss. He seeks one sig­nif­i­cant act to make him feel as though his life has been worth some­thing. And even Jōns, for all his talk, doubts his own doubt. As this tur­moil builds within each char­ac­ter, the silence becomes less obvi­ous and sound takes a larger role. A storm is building.

Enter Death! Even when Bengt Ekerot isn’t onscreen, the pres­ence and threat of death is never far off. The moun­te­banks have a skull mask that is always hang­ing nearby, and shots are often framed so that the mask is look­ing over the shoul­der of the char­ac­ters. In Block’s most pas­toral scene, the din­ner of wild straw­ber­ries and milk at dusk, the mask of Death is at its liveli­est, the eyes seem alive as a sheet blows behind them.

A sim­i­lar pro­gres­sion as the one from silence to sound also takes place in terms of Death. Early in the film Death is to be respected but feared, and the scenes where he is present are filled with a vivac­ity that even­tu­ally becomes Death’s province by the end of the film. The light­hearted scenes seem shal­low in the after­math of the plague-​swept coun­try­side and the fear that dri­ves men to burn a girl for for­ni­ca­tion with the Devil. What Death offers becomes more and more appeal­ing, almost joy­ous to the per­ils of living.

Yet Block still seeks the one mer­i­to­rius act that will allow him to die at peace, even if his ques­tions remain unan­swered. He suc­ceeds, in a tran­scen­den­tal moment [fea­tur­ing my favorite shot, below] while play­ing chess with Death. He knows he has lost, but stalls long enough for the moun­te­bank fam­ily to escape. He has cheated Death on oth­ers’ behalf, at the cost of his own life. Yet in some way, death is a reward involv­ing the sub­mis­sion of his own will to that of the inevitable.

In the final sequence, as Death makes them dance along the hill­side, it is inter­est­ing to see who is not in his train, Jōns girl and Block’s wife Karin are not included. I don’t know why, but I sus­pect it has some­thing to do with the fact that they were the most wel­com­ing of Death when he appeared.

This film is so ripe for exam­i­na­tion that I could go on for much longer, talk­ing about it as an alle­gory for the Cold War, as an exis­ten­tial­ist moral­ity play, as a film about deal­ing with reli­gious doubt and tons more. But I’ve writ­ten enough for today.

2 And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

3 And another angel came and stood at the altar, hav­ing a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.

4 And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.

5 And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thun­der­ings, and light­nings, and an earth­quake.
Rev. 8:2 – 5

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Peter Cowie.
• Tons of good qual­ity stills here.
• An undated draft of the script at IMSDb. The Cri­te­rion sub­ti­tling is supe­rior, in my opin­ion.
• Analy­sis of The Sev­enth Seal from Film & the Crit­i­cal Eye by Den­nis DeNitto and William Her­man.
• YouTube film stu­dent reen­act­ment of a scene from the film. [I had to do one of these from a Steven Soder­bergh film]
• The Cri­te­rion Contraption’s review.