The Seventh Seal

For other uses, see The Seventh Seal (disambiguation).

The Seventh Seal
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ingmar Bergman
Written by	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Max von Sydow Bibi Andersson Gunnar Björnstrand Nils Poppe Bengt Ekerot Inga Landgré
Music by	Erik Nordgren
Cinematography	Gunnar Fischer
Editing by	Lennart Wallén
Distributed by	AB Svensk Filmindustri
Release date(s)	Sweden: 16 February 1957 United States: 13 August 1958
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Sweden
Language	Swedish
Budget	US$150,000 (estimated)

The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot), who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). Here the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God" which is a major theme of the film.^[1]

The film is considered a major classic of world cinema. It helped Bergman to establish himself as a world-renowned director and contains scenes which have become iconic through parodies and homages. The Jesuit publication America identifies it as having begun "a series of seven films that explored the possibility of faith in a post-Holocaust, nuclear age".^[2] Likewise, film historians Thomas W. Bohn and Richard L. Stromgren identify this film as beginning "his cycle of films dealing with the conundrum of religious faith".^[3]

Synopsis

Disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) return after fighting in the Crusades and find Sweden being ravaged by the plague. On the beach immediately after their arrival, Block encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot), personified as a pale, black-cowled figure resembling a monk. Block, in the middle of a chess game he has been playing alone, challenges Death to a chess match, believing that he can forestall his demise as long as the game continues. Death agrees, and they start a new game.

The other characters in the story do not see Death, and when the chess board comes out at various times in the story, they believe Block is continuing his habit of playing alone.

Death and Antonius Block choose sides for the chess game; Death gets the black pieces.

Block and Jöns head for Block's castle. Along the way, they pass some actors, Jof and his wife Mia, with their baby son, Mikael, and their actor-manager, Skat. Jof has visions, but Mia is skeptical.

The knight and the squire enter a church where a fresco of the Dance of Death is being painted. Jöns draws a small figure representing himself. "This is squire Jöns. He grins at Death; his world is a Jöns-world, believable only to himself, ridiculous to all including himself, meaningless to Heaven and of no interest to Hell."^[4] Block tells someone he mistakes for a priest in the confessional booth, "I met Death today. We are playing chess." He confides, "My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning. I feel no bitterness or self-reproach because the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed."^[5] After giving away his strategy in the chess game, Block discovers that his listener is Death. Leaving the church, Block speaks with a young woman who has been condemned to be burnt alive for supposedly consorting with the Devil, but is likely to have been raped by a priest.

Shortly thereafter, Jöns searches an abandoned village for water. He saves a servant girl (Gunnel Lindblom) from being raped by a man robbing a corpse. He recognises Raval, a theologian, who ten years ago had convinced Antonius to leave his wife and join a crusade to the Holy Land. Jöns promises to brand Raval on the face if they meet again. The girl joins Jöns. The trio ride into town, where the little acting troupe is performing. Skat introduces Jof and Mia to the crowd, then is enticed by Lisa, the blacksmiths wife, away for a tryst. They run off together. Jof and Mia's performance is interrupted by the arrival of a procession of flagellants.

At a public house, Jof comes across Raval. Raval forces Jof to dance on the tables like a bear. Jöns appears and, true to his word, slices Raval's face.^[6] Block enjoys a country picnic of milk and wild strawberries gathered by Mia. Block says: "I'll carry this memory between my hands as if it were bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk...And it will be an adequate sign – it will be enough for me."^[7] He invites the actors to his castle, where they will be safer from the plague.

Along the way, they come across Skat and Lisa in the forest. Lisa, dissatisfied with Skat, returns to her husband. After the others leave, Skat climbs a tree for the night. Death starts cutting down the tree, informing the actor that his "time is up." When Skat pleads that there must be "special rules for actors", Death responds that Skat's "performance is cancelled on account of death".^[8]

They come across the condemned young woman again. The knight demands of a monk, "What have you done with the child?" Death asks, "Do you never stop asking questions?" Block answers, "No. Never."^[9] Block asks the woman again to summon Satan, so he can ask him about God. The girl claims already to have done so, but Block cannot see him, only her terror. He gives her herbs to take away her pain.^[10]

Raval reappears. Dying of the plague, he pleads for water. The servant girl attempts to bring him some, but is stopped by Jöns. Jof tells Mia that he can see the knight playing chess with Death, and decides to flee with his family while Death is preoccupied.^[11]

After hearing Death state "No one escapes me" Block knocks the chess pieces over, distracting Death while the family slips away. Death places the pieces back on the board, then wins the game on the next move. He announces that when they meet again, Block's time—and that of all those travelling with him—will be up. Before departing, Death asks if Block has accomplished his one "meaningful deed" yet; Block replies that he has.

The final scene depicting the "danse macabre".

The knight is reunited with his wife, the sole occupant of his castle, all the servants having fled. The party shares one "last supper" before Death comes for them. Block prays to God, "Have mercy on us, because we are small and frightened and ignorant."^[12]

Meanwhile, the little family sits out a storm, which Jof interprets to be "the Angel of Death and he's very big." The next morning, Jof, with his second sight, sees the knight and his followers being led away over the hills in a solemn dance of death. "They bear away from their light, while their strict lord Death bids them to dance... and the rain washes, and cleanses the salt of their tears from their cheeks."^[13] Mia chides him. "You with your visions and dreams."

Cast

• Max von Sydow – Antonius Block, knight
• Gunnar Björnstrand – Jöns, squire
• Nils Poppe – Jof
• Bibi Andersson – Mia, Jof's wife
• Bengt Ekerot – Death
• Åke Fridell – Blacksmith Plog
• Inga Gill – Lisa, blacksmith's wife
• Erik Strandmark – Jonas Skat
• Bertil Anderberg – Raval, the thief
• Gunnel Lindblom – Mute girl
• Maud Hansson – Witch
• Inga Landgré – Karin, Block's wife
• Gunnar Olsson – Albertus Pictor, church painter
• Anders Ek – The Monk
• Lars Lind – Young monk
• Benkt-Åke Benktsson – Merchant
• Tor Borong – Farmer
• Gudrun Brost – Maid
• Harry Asklund – Inn keeper
• Ulf Johanson – Jack's leader

Production

Bergman originally wrote the play Trämålning (Wood Painting) in 1953/1954 for the acting students of Malmö City Theatre. The first time it was performed in public was in radio in 1954, directed by Bergman. He also directed it on stage in Malmö the next spring, and in the autumn it was staged in Stockholm, directed by Bengt Ekerot who would later play the character Death in the film version.^[14]

In his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, Bergman wrote that "Wood Painting gradually became The Seventh Seal, an uneven film which lies close to my heart, because it was made under difficult circumstances in a surge of vitality and delight."^[15] The script for the Seventh Seal was commenced while Bergman was in the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm recovering from a stomach complaint.^[16] It was at first rejected^[who?] and Bergman was given the go-ahead for the project from Carl-Anders Dymling at Svensk Filmindustri only after the success at Cannes of Smiles of a Summer Night^[17] Bergman rewrote the script five times and was given a schedule of only thirty-five days and a budget of $150,000.^[18] It was to be the seventeenth film he had directed.^[19]

All scenes except two were shot in or around the Filmstaden studios in Solna. The exceptions were the famous opening scene with Death and the Knight playing chess by the sea and the ending with the dance of death, which were both shot at Hovs Hallar, a rocky, precipitous beach area in north-western Scania.^[20]

In the Magic Lantern autobiography Bergman writes of the film's iconic penultimate shot: "The image of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was achieved at hectic speed because most of the actors had finished for the day. Assistants, electricians, and a make-up man and about two summer visitors, who never knew what it was all about, had to dress up in the costumes of those condemned to death. A camera with no sound was set up and the picture shot before the cloud dissolved."^[21]

Portrait of the Middle Ages

Death playing chess, from Täby kyrka

With regard to the relevancy of historical accuracy to a film that is heavily metaphorical and allegorical, John Aberth, writing in A Knight at the Movies, holds

the film only partially succeeds in conveying the period atmosphere and thought world of the fourteenth century. Bergman would probably counter that it was never his intention to make an historical or period film. As it was written in a program note that accompanied the movie's premier "It is a modern poem presented with medieval material that has been very freely handled...The script in particular—embodies a mid-twentieth century existentialist angst....Still, to be fair to Bergman, one must allow him his artistic license, and the script's modernisms may be justified as giving the movie's medieval theme a compelling and urgent contemporary relevance...Yet the film succeeds to a large degree because it is set in the Middle Ages, a time that can seem both very remote and very immediate to us living in the modern world....Ultimately The Seventh Seal should be judged as a historical film by how well it combines the medieval and the modern."^[22]

Even less equivocally defending it as an allegory, Aleksander Kwiatkowski in the book Swedish Film Classics, writes

The international response to the film which among other awards won the jury's special prize at Cannes in 1957 reconfirmed the author' high rank and proved that The Seventh Seal regardless of its degree of accuracy in reproducing medieval scenery may be considered as a universal, timeless allegory.^[23]

Much of the film's imagery is derived from medieval art. For example, Bergman has stated that the image of a man playing chess with a skeletal Death was inspired by a medieval church painting from the 1480s in Täby kyrka, Täby, north of Stockholm, painted by Albertus Pictor.^[24]

However, the medieval Sweden portrayed in this movie includes creative anachronisms. The last crusade (the Ninth) ended in 1271, and the Black Death hit Europe in 1348. In addition, the flagellant movement was foreign to Sweden, and large-scale witch persecutions only began in the 15th century.^[25]

Generally speaking, historians Johan Huizinga and Friedrich Heer and Barbara Tuchman have all argued that the late Middle Ages of the 14th century was a period of "doom and gloom" similar to what is reflected in this film, characterized by a feeling of pessimism, an increase in a penitential style of piety that was slightly masochistic, all aggravated by various disasters such as the Black Plague, famine, the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and papal schism.^[26] This is sometimes called the crisis of the Late Middle Ages and Barbara Tuchman regards the 14th century as "a distant mirror" of the 20th century in a way that echoes Bergman's sensibilities. Nonetheless, the period of the Crusades is well before this era; they took place in a more optimistic period.^[26]

Chess in the film

The chess game opens with the knight holding out his hands, a white piece hidden in one hand, a black one in the other. Death chooses the black pawn ("You are black", says Block. "It becomes me well." replies Death). The first moves of each use the king's pawn.^[27]

In the confessional, the knight says "I use a combination of the bishop and the knight which he hasn't yet discovered. In the next move I'll shatter one of his flanks." Death (in disguise as the priest) replies "I'll remember that."^[5] When they play by the beach, the knight says: "Because I revealed my tactics to you I'm in retreat. It's your move." Death captures his opponent's knight. "You did the right thing", states the knight, "you fell right in the trap. Check! Don't worry about my laughter, save your king instead." Death's response is to lean over the chess board and make a psychological move. "Are you going to escort the juggler and his wife through the forest? Those whose names are Jof and Mia and who have a small son." "Why do you ask?" says the knight. "Oh, no reason", replies Death.^[28]

Immediately after the death of the robber Raval, Death takes the knight's queen. "I didn't notice that", says the knight.^[29] This is portrayed as a major setback. However, the queen was not as powerful as it currently is until many centuries after the time period of this film, when a chess-variant initially called "chess of the mad queen" became more popular than the traditional game.

In one of the last scenes, the knight pretends to knock over the pieces so the young family can escape while Death is reconstructing the game. "You are mated on the next move, Antonius Block" says Death. "That's true", admits the knight. "Did you enjoy your reprieve?" "Yes, I did", Block replies.^[30]

Major themes

The title refers to a passage about the end of the world from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). Thus, in the confessional scene the knight states: "Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses? Why should He hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?...What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to?"^[31] Death, impersonating the confessional priest, refuses to reply. Similarly, later, as he eats the strawberries with the family of actors, Antonius Block says: "Faith is a torment – did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call."^[7] Bragg notes that the concept of the "Silence of God" in the face of evil, or the pleas of believers or would-be-believers, may be influenced by the punishments of silence meted out by Bergman's father, a chaplain in the State Lutheran Church.^[32] Interestingly, in Bergman's original radio play sometimes translated as A Painting on Wood, the figure of Death in a Dance of Death is represented not by an actor, but by silence, "mere nothingness, mere absence...terrifying...the void."^[33]

Strong influences on the film were Bibi Andersson (with whom Bergman was in a relationship 1955–59) who played the juggler's wife Mia, Picasso's picture of the two acrobats, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, Strindberg's Folk Sagas and To Denmark, the frescoes at Haskeborga church and a painting by Albertus Pictor in Täby kyrka.^[34] Just prior to shooting Bergman directed for radio the Play of Everyman by Hugo von Hofmannstahl.^[34] By this time he had also directed plays by Shakespeare, Strindberg, Camus, Chesterton, Anouilh, Tennessee Williams, Pirandello, Lehár, Molière and Ostrovsky.^[35]

Bergman grew up in a home infused with an intense Christianity, his father being a charismatic rector (this may have explained Bergman's childhood infatuation with Hitler which later deeply tormented him).^[36] As a six-year old child, Bergman used to help the gardener carry corpses from the Royal Hospital Sophiahemmet (where his father was chaplain) to the mortuary.^[37] When, as a boy, he saw the film Black Beauty, the fire scene excited him so much he stayed in bed for three days with a temperature.^[37] Despite living a Bohemian lifestyle in partial rebellion against his upbringing, Bergman often signed his scripts with the initials "S.D.G" (Soli Deo Gloria) – "To God Alone The Glory" – just as JS Bach did at the end of every musical composition.^[38]

Gerald Mast writes,

"Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, the Squire [...] treats death as a bitter and hopeless joke. Since we all play chess with death, and since we all must suffer through that hopeless joke, the only question about the game is how long it will last and how well we will play it. To play it well, to live, is to love and not to hate the body and the mortal as the Church urges in Bergman's metaphor."^[39]

Melvyn Bragg writes,

"[I]t is constructed like an argument. It is a story told as a sermon might be delivered: an allegory...each scene is at once so simple and so charged and layered that it catches us again and again...Somehow all of Bergman's own past, that of his father, that of his reading and doing and seeing, that of his Swedish culture, of his political burning and religious melancholy, poured into a series of pictures which carry that swell of contributions and contradictions so effortlessly that you could tell the story to a child, publish it as a storybook of photographs and yet know that the deepest questions of religion and the most mysterious revelation of simply being alive are both addressed."^[40]

Reception

Upon its original release in Sweden, The Seventh Seal was met by very positive reviews although not without reservations. Nils Beyer at Morgon-tidningen compared it to Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath. While finding Dreyer's films to be superior, he still noted that "it isn't just any director that you feel like comparing to the old Danish master." He also praised the usage of the cast, in particular Max von Sydow whose character he described as "a pale, serious Don Quixote character with a face as if sculpted in wood", and "Bibi Andersson, who appears as if painted in faded watercolours but still can emit small delicious glimpses of female warmth." Hanserik Hjertén for Arbetaren started his review by praising the cinematography, but soon went on to describe the film as "a horror film for children" and that beyond the superficial, it reminds a lot of Bergman's "sophomoric films from the 40s."^[14]

Bosley Crowther had only positive things to say in his 1958 review for The New York Times, and praised how the themes were elevated by the cinematography and acting: "the profundities of the ideas are lightened and made flexible by glowing pictorial presentation of action that is interesting and strong. Mr. Bergman uses his camera and actors for sharp, realistic effects."^[41]

The film has been regarded since its release as a masterpiece of cinematography.^[42] It was Ranked #8 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.^[43] In a poll held by the same magazine, it was voted 335th 'Greatest Movie of All Time' from a list of 500.^[44]

The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 30th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.^[45]

Impact

The Seventh Seal significantly helped Bergman in gaining his position as a world-class director. When the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival,^[46] the attention generated by it (along with the previous year's Smiles of a Summer Night) made Bergman and his stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson well-known to the European film community, and the critics and readers of Cahiers du Cinéma, among others, discovered him with this movie. Within five years of this, he had established himself as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema. With its images and reflections upon death and the meaning of life, The Seventh Seal had a symbolism that was "immediately apprehensible to people trained in literary culture who were just beginning to discover the 'art' of film, and it quickly became a staple of high school and college literature courses... Unlike Hollywood 'movies,' The Seventh Seal clearly was aware of elite artistic culture and thus was readily appreciated by intellectual audiences."^[47]

Parody

Bengt Ekerot as Death

The representation of Death as a white-faced man in a dark cape who plays chess with mortals has been a popular object of parody in other films. One that is exclusively focused on Bergman is a 15-minute parody of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries entitled De Düva (mock Swedish for "The Dove"), which contains a final scene in which the protagonist plays badminton with Death and Death is defeated when he is hit in the eye by the droppings of a passing dove. The photography imitates throughout the style of Bergman's cinematographers Sven Nykqvist and Gunnar Fischer.^[48] The trailer to the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail also includes a game against Death being cut short, when the game of chess is interrupted by Death hitting the Knight's face with a pie. In the BBC comedy The Young Ones series two episode "Nasty", Death is shown playing chess and, upon realising he had lost, swats the chess pieces off the board in a fit of anger and annoyance, shouts 'Bollocks to this!' and promptly kills his opponent.

The idea of Death playing games other than chess was further parodied in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, in which he appears as a major character (played by William Sadler) who is beaten by the protagonists at Battleship, Clue, electric football and Twister. An episode of the television series The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy includes a similar theme, with Death becoming a major character tied to the main characters after they defeat him in a game of limbo. The 2001 Cinema Insomnia screening of The Seventh Seal included sketches in which the presenter and his co-host play chess while dressed as the film's characters.

Woody Allen, an enormous fan of Ingmar Bergman ^[49], references his work in his serious dramas as well as his comedies,^[50] including Love and Death, a film which broadly parodies 19th-century Russian novels with a closing "Dance of Death" scene imitating Bergman. Allen has even written a short, one-act play entitled Death Knocks (published in Getting Even), in which he depicts a man playing Death at gin rummy.

In the Animaniacs segment, Meatballs or Consequences, the Warner siblings challenge Death, sporting a Swedish accent, to a game of checkers.

Stephen Colbert can be seen playing chess with Death during the title sequence to "Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert D.F.A." from his program The Colbert Report, during which he distracts Death and switches pieces around on the board, to his advantage.

See also

• Knight of faith in Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
• Middle Ages in film
• Death (personification)
• List of historical drama films
• List of submissions to the 30th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Swedish submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

Citations

1. ^ Melvyn Bragg (1998). The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet). BFI Publishing. p. 45. http://books.google.com/books?id=oahZAAAAMAAJ&q=Melvyn+Bragg+(Det+Sjunde+Inseglet)&dq=Melvyn+Bragg+(Det+Sjunde+Inseglet). 
2. ^ Richard A. Blake (AUGUST 27, 2007). "Ingmar Bergman, Theologian?". America magazine. http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10155. Retrieved 14 December 2010. 
3. ^ Bohn, Thomas; Richard L. Stromgren (1987). Light and shadows: a history of motion pictures. Mayfield Pub. Co. p. 269. ISBN 0874847028, 9780874847024. 
4. ^ Ingmar Bergman (1960). The Seventh Seal. Touchstone. pp. 148. 
5. ^ ^{a b} Bergman, 1960 p. 147.
6. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 164-165
7. ^ ^{a b} Bergman, 1960 p.172.
8. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 187
9. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 181
10. ^ Bergman, 1960 p.135
11. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 191.
12. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 195.
13. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 197
14. ^ ^{a b} Det sjunde inseglet – Pressreaktion & Kommentar Svensk Filmografi (in Swedish). Swedish Film Institute. Retrieved on 17 August 2009.
15. ^ Ingmar Bergman (1988). The Magic Lantern. Penguin Books. London. p. 274.
16. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 27.
17. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 48.
18. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 49.
19. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 46
20. ^ Ingmar Bergman Face to Face – Shooting the film The Seventh Seal
21. ^ Ingmar Bergman (1988). The Magic Lantern. Penguin Books. London. pp. 274–275.
22. ^ John Aberth (2003). A Knight at the Movies. Routledge. pp. 217–218.
23. ^ Swedish Film Classics by Aleksander Kwiatkowski, Svenska filminstitutet p. 93
24. ^ Stated in Marie Nyreröd's interview series (the first part named Bergman och filmen) aired on Sveriges Television Easter 2004.
25. ^ Said by Swedish historian Dick Harrison in an introduction to the movie on Sveriges Television, 2005. Reiterated in his book Gud vill det! ISBN 91-7037-119-9
26. ^ ^{a b} Barbara Tuchman (1978). A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0394400267
27. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 135.
28. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 172.
29. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 190.
30. ^ Bergman, 1960 p. 192.
31. ^ Bergman, 1960 pp. 145–146.
32. ^ Bragg, 1998 pp. 40, 45.
33. ^ Martin Esslin. Mediations: Essays on Brecht, Beckett and the Media. Abacus. London. 1980. p. 181.
34. ^ ^{a b} Bragg, 1998 p. 49
35. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 29.
36. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 44.
37. ^ ^{a b} Bragg, 1998 p. 43
38. ^ Bragg, 1998 p. 28.
39. ^ Gerald Mast A Short History of the Movies. p. 405.
40. ^ Bragg, 1998 pp. 64–65
41. ^ Crowther, Bosley (1958-10-14) "Seventh Seal'; Swedish Allegory Has Premiere at Paris." The New York Times. Retrieved on 17 August 2009.
42. ^ Ebert, Roger (16 April 2000). "Great Movies — The Seventh Seal". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000416/REVIEWS08/401010358/1023. Retrieved 18 August 2007. 
43. ^ "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema". Empire. http://www.empireonline.com/features/100-greatest-world-cinema-films/default.asp?film=8. 
44. ^ http://www.empireonline.com/500/31.asp
45. ^ Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
46. ^ "Festival de Cannes: The Seventh Seal". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3563/year/1957.html. Retrieved 8 February 2009. 
47. ^ Monaco, James (2000). How To Read a Film. Oxford University Press. pp. 311–312. ISBN 0-19-513981-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=TSSfJb011QgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
48. ^ Remembering De Düva (The Dove), a 30 July 2007 Slate article
49. ^ [1]
50. ^ See Girgus, Sam (2002). The Films of Woody Allen. Cambridge University Press. p. 132. ISBN 0-521-81091-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=GZbcl1o3kOQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. 

References

• Bergman, Ingmar (1960). The Seventh Seal. Touchstone. 
• Bragg, Melvyn (1998). The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet). BFI Publishing. ISBN 978-0851703916. http://books.google.com/books?id=oahZAAAAMAAJ&q=Melvyn+Bragg+(Det+Sjunde+Inseglet)&dq=Melvyn+Bragg+(Det+Sjunde+Inseglet). 

Bibliography

• Livingston, Paisley (1982). Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801414520

External links

• The Seventh Seal at the Internet Movie Database
• The Seventh Seal at AllRovi
• Voted #13 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010)
• The Seventh Seal at Rotten Tomatoes

Awards
Preceded by The Mystery of Picasso	Special Jury Prize, Cannes 1956 tied with Kanał	Succeeded by Mon Oncle