Film

A knight returning from the Crusades plays chess with Death on a desolate beach, a family of traveling performers share a meal of milk and wild strawberries, and a chain of sinners dance across the horizon to their doom. Few films can boast as many images that burn themselves into the viewer’s memory, and fewer still are as emblematic of an era in international cinema that brought aesthetic and philosophical seriousness into the mainstream. With Gunnar Fischer’s chiaroscuro cinematography and von Sydow’s soul-bearing, star-making lead performance, The Seventh Seal remains the most cited, imitated, and parodied of Bergman’s masterpieces.