The Seventh Seal (1957) on Netflix
NR19571h 36mDramaFantasyHistoryThriller
Death comes for Antonius Block, a knight home from the Crusades to a land in plague's grip. Block proposes a chess match, and he lives as long as it lasts.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb8.1/10217,775 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
Antonius Block rides home from the Crusades with his squire Jöns, into a country ravaged by plague. Block has lost his faith and sees his past years as wasted. Death appears to claim him, and the knight talks his way into a chess match that keeps him alive for as long as it lasts. He hopes the time will let him carry out one deed that matters. On the road he and Jöns fall in with a troupe of traveling players, among them Jof, his wife Mia and their baby son Mikael, and the actor-manager Jonas Skat. Block offers them shelter at his castle. Jöns also rescues a mute servant girl from Raval, a theologian who years earlier urged Block to take the cross.
Cast
- Bertil Anderbergas Raval
Show all 20 cast
- Harry Asklundas Landlord (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Seventh Seal (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bergman began the script while in the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm recovering from a stomach complaint. Svensk Filmindustri head Carl-Anders Dymling rejected it at first, giving the go-ahead only after Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night succeeded at Cannes; Bergman rewrote it five times and got thirty-five days and $150,000.
- Bergman said the image of a man playing chess with a skeletal Death came from a medieval church painting of the 1480s in Täby kyrka, north of Stockholm, painted by Albertus Pictor.
- The film's Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, plus Smiles of a Summer Night the year before, made Bergman and stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson known to the European film community, and within five years he was established as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema.
- Death as a white-faced man in a dark cape who plays chess with mortals became a popular object of parody in films and television; in the 1968 mock-Swedish short De Düva, the protagonist plays badminton against Death and wins when a passing dove's droppings strike Death in the eye.
SPOILER
The title track of Iron Maiden's 2003 album Dance of Death was inspired by the film's final scene; guitarist Janick Gers described the figures on the horizon doing "a little jig".
Stills
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