The Seventh Seal

Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal is a work of stark and powerful imagery, with one strong image succeeding another to build a whole, not unlike watching a medieval tableau whose scenes are intended to teach a lesson. Underlying this film is a strong sense of the theatrical. In a sense, this is true of any great film, but in the case of The Seventh Seal concepts of drama and the theatrical are inherent in the structure of the work and in the way the director shapes the material, as if moving from one scene in a play to the next, and all the while doing so by drawing attention to the theatricality as a way of enhancing the meaning of the whole. The film is a philosophical work in which ideas are embodied in human actions, in symbolism, and in the dramatic elements of the film. In this sense, the filmmaker is developing his philosophical ideas out in the open, in the way a dramatist would, using allegorical elements and powerful dramatic moments as punctuation. The film's stark look should not mask the fact that it is not a realistic work but a symbolic one using the fantastic as its mode of presentation.

The sense of the theatrical is evident in the opening frames. After a legend setting forth the time, the place, and the situation--Sweden at the time is plagued by the Black Death--the film begins with a dramatic flourish as if a stage is being set--light blasts forth from the heavens, accompanied by a heavenly choir underlining the fact that God is powerful

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still fear. The suffering of the knight points to a problem in a world so filled with fearful images, the possibility that people will not feel more acutely but will stop feeling at all. He says he is filled with loathing and horror, but at the same time he is separated by this from the world of human beings A sense of fear and awe is precisely what the film creates from the beginning, and its striking imagery has this effect on the viewer. The sudden blast of light at the opening is like a stage curtain opening on the world, and the chorus instills awe and fear. The death-strewn landscape has much the effect that painter tells the vassal his artworks have, forcing us to think about matters of life and death. The religious imagery and icons remind us as well of mortality and the afterlife. The chess game has the allegorical effect of offering a visual depiction of the struggle between life and death. The game is carried on over a period of time, as it is in every life, with death an ever-present threat. Yet for all the solemnity of the interaction through most of the film, the ultimate goal of the filmmaker is to fuse our sense of life and death in a way that enhances our experience of life. Arguably the presence of de

Category: Film - T