Nice effects though.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Maybe, a parable. dark, bitter, fascinating. but, from childhood, when I saw it for the first time, to present, I discovered it as a sort of revelation of the roots of life. remembering the traits of Middle Age , the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Bruegel, the themes of Bergman's cinema. and the right perspective about life, choices, expectations and the true answer to the near reality. for long time, the scene of chess play was the only who I considered significant. not exactly as a game between Death and Knight but as the build of the fundamental answer of old fears. a film who could be reduced at a long chain of symbols, cultural references, myths, legends. in fact, only a question. about life and faith and fear and happiness and decisions.

A fine and deep meditation on life and death. If there were more of such movies on this planet, humanity would be more than just one step closer to enlightenment. Great, fantastic, true art. If you compare The Seventh Seal with all that p.c.-crap of our present days, you see easy what kind of mediocre minds today write and make movies and fill all kinds of arts with their "output". The Seventh Seal: outstanding and best of the best - one of the few movies that I would shoot into space so aliens (not Ridley's ones of course) could watch them too ;)

Ingmar Bergman's career of brooding cinematic successes was practically borne here, in an amazing study of doomsday travelers in 14th century Sweden confronting their mortality. In the age of the Black Plague, the streets are filled with pagans, drunks, artisans, performers, religious zealots and volunteer witch-burners; a knight and his squire, home from the Crusades, stop at the ocean, where a most benign Grim Reaper tells the knight he has been at his side for a long while. They engage in a winner-take-all game of chess, though the knight is just biding time to save the friends he has made from Death's clutches. The barbarism and cruelty aside, writer-director Bergman does show a streak of pithy black humor, resulting in some amazing sequences (such as the juggler cut down from a tree by Death and his scythe). The overlay of brutality in the name of Christianity, the torment of faith and the heavy symbolism are often tough to wade through, while the metaphor of the chess game has left the picture open for parody. Still, "The Seventh Seal" is a must-see film, matching its iconic imagery with themes of the eternal struggle. *** from ****

On the Criterion Collection interview with Ingmar Bergman, he relates that he wrote the chess scene over his own fear of dying. This would have been an immensely interesting idea to explore, but after he mentions it, the interview is practically over. That left me rather frustrated.The film itself may also leave one rather frustrated, as it explores the principal character agonizing over God's unwillingness to show His face and answer his existential questions about the meaning of life and the certainty of death. When Death (Bengt Ekerot) makes his entrance to claim him a victim, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) challenges the Grim Reaper to a game of chess, the winner to exact his own reward. The Knight must quickly readjust his game plan after he unwittingly reveals his strategy to the black clad harvester of souls.The film is set during the time of the Black Plague, following a 'worthless' crusade of ten years that the Knight and his Squire Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) participated in. All around them are wanderers half crazed with fear at the thought of the Plague approaching. All the time Death appropriates his victims, he claims to know nothing and hold no secrets. Fearing his own demise, Block (Bergman?) disrupts the chess board, intent on prolonging his existence in a world full of uncertainty."The Seventh Seal" is Bergman's stunning allegory of man's search for meaning, but what I've come to understand after many years is that each person must come to terms with himself from within. Attempting to extract answers from a single source is bound to end in disappointment, trapped if you will in a Knight's world of phantoms and dreams more like nightmares. This is the kind of film that presents more questions than answers, as I'm sure Bergman understood and intended.