Seventh seal

Only 3 of the 47 reviews in the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate are negative about The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 Special Jury Prize winner at Cannes (tied with Kanal). The B&W allegory about Death, also written by Bergman, is acknowledged to be classic cinema and, like all revered objects, warrants extra attention.

Clad in a black robe, the character of Death (Bengt Ekerot) arrives on a barren Swedish shoreline to claim the life of a mournful knight (Max von Sydow) returning home from the Crusades with his disrespectful squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand). Death accepts a challenge to play chess with the knight.

Meanwhile, a jolly traveling actor (Nils Poppe) sees the Virgin Mary and Child in a field, and his loving wife (Bibi Andersson) teases him about his visions. The leader of their troupe of three proves to be a cunning, grumpy Lothario.

Bergman adds additional characters as the knight rides towards his castle, passing superstitious medieval settlements ravaged by the Black Plague. A witch will be burned, priests pass harsh judgment, the figure of Death is painted on church walls, processional flagellants bear whips, drinkers in an inn cheer vicious attacks. The knight and Death meet and parry words while playing out their game, until the knight and his remaining travel companions reach his castle, his wife and Death. Only the loving actors and their baby boy survive.

Such a deliberately contrived sequence of morality-cum-mortality tales, reviewing faith and life's meaning, works best in B&W and in medieval settings. Bergman's is reminiscent of contemporary dramas constructed by Christopher Fry and other literary commentators, and it's no surprise to learn that his film was originally a stage presentation written for university actors.

With the exception of Poppe's eye-boggling semi-comic scenery-chewing character, the lead roles are credible figures of human pride, love, loyalty, lust, and fear of death. The threads that link them, and the journey they share, are far less believable. Bergman's cinematography, though starkly attractive (both for mood-setting distant shots and close-ups) and richly shadowed most of the time, is generally as static in its framing as the dramatic set-pieces it photographs ponderously.

Over-rated? Probably not in 1957. In this century, it should slip further down the list of must-see classics.