Ingmar Bergman

The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal

Returning exhausted from the Crusades to find medieval Sweden gripped by the Plague, a knight (Max von Sydow) suddenly comes face-to-face with the hooded figure of Death, and challenges him to a game of chess. As the fateful game progresses, and the knight and his squire encounter a gallery of outcasts from a society in despair, Bergman mounts a profound inquiry into the nature of faith and the torment of mortality. One of the most influential films of its time, The Seventh Seal is a stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning and a work of stark visual poetry.

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Film Info

  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Sweden
  • 1957
  • 96 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Swedish
  • Spine #11

Special Features

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • Digital transfer (box set edition); new, restored high-definition digital transfer (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Introduction by Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003 (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Audio commentary by Bergman expert Peter Cowie, with a new afterword on the two-DVD and Blu-ray editions
  • Bergman Island (2006), an 83-minute documentary on Bergman by Marie Nyreröd, featuring in-depth and revealing interviews with the director (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Archival audio interview with Max von Sydow (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • A 1989 tribute to Bergman by filmmaker Woody Allen (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman’s career, narrated by Cowie (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • An annotated, illustrated Bergman filmography, featuring excerpts from Wild Strawberries and The Magician with commentary (box set only)
  • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by Cowie (box set edition); a booklet featuring a new essay by critic Gary Giddins (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions)

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions); new cover by Gordon Reynolds (box set edition)

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Collector's Set

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Blu-Ray Box Set

30 Discs

$239.96

Special Features

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • Digital transfer (box set edition); new, restored high-definition digital transfer (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Introduction by Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003 (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Audio commentary by Bergman expert Peter Cowie, with a new afterword on the two-DVD and Blu-ray editions
  • Bergman Island (2006), an 83-minute documentary on Bergman by Marie Nyreröd, featuring in-depth and revealing interviews with the director (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Archival audio interview with Max von Sydow (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • A 1989 tribute to Bergman by filmmaker Woody Allen (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman’s career, narrated by Cowie (two-DVD and Blu-ray only)
  • An annotated, illustrated Bergman filmography, featuring excerpts from Wild Strawberries and The Magician with commentary (box set only)
  • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by Cowie (box set edition); a booklet featuring a new essay by critic Gary Giddins (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions)

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse (two-DVD and Blu-ray editions); new cover by Gordon Reynolds (box set edition)
The Seventh Seal
Cast
Max von Sydow
Antonius Block, the knight
Inga Landgré
Karin, the knight's wife
Gunnar Björnstrand
Jöns, the squire
Nils Poppe
Jof (Joseph)
Bibi Andersson
Mia (Mary)
Bengt Ekerot
Death
Åke Fridell
Plog, the smith
Inga Gill
Lisa, Plog's wife
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography
Gunnar Fischer
Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman
Music
Erik Nordgren
Editing
Lennart Wallén

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From The Current

The Seventh Seal
The Seventh Seal
For more than forty years, The Seventh Seal has been a benchmark by which all other great foreign films are judged. It launched the international career of its director, Ingmar Bergman, and made a star of its 27-year-old leading actor, Max von Sydow.…

By Peter Cowie

Essays — Oct 13, 1987
The Seventh Seal: There Go the Clowns
The Seventh Seal: There Go the Clowns

In recent years, The Seventh Seal has often been honored more for its historical stature than its prevailing vitality. Those who attended its first international rollout and were changed forever by the experience are now second-guessing their attachm

…

By Gary Giddins

Essays — Jun 15, 2009
Margarethe von Trotta Found Her Cinema Gateway in The Seventh Seal

Under the Influence

Margarethe von Trotta Found Her Cinema Gateway in The Seventh Seal

The great German director reflects on her first experience with Ingmar Bergman’s classic meditation on mortality, a film that opened her eyes to the possibilities of cinema.

Visual Analysis — Nov 19, 2018
The Looming Gravitas of Max von Sydow

Ingmar’s Actors

The Looming Gravitas of Max von Sydow

Ingmar Bergman scholar Peter Cowie explores how the great actor’s authoritative screen presence allowed him to embody the director’s fears and ideals.

On the Channel — Nov 19, 2018
Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, Sisters in the Art

Ingmar’s Actors

Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, Sisters in the Art

The powerhouse actors at the center of Persona became two of Ingmar Bergman’s most essential collaborators, bringing a remarkable emotional range to their performances.

On the Channel — Nov 18, 2018
A Double Dose of Death
A Double Dose of Death

The Grim Reaper faces off against two wildly different sets of opponents in a new Criterion Channel double feature, celebrating the hundredth birthday of Ingmar Bergman.

On the Channel — Jul 26, 2018
The Magic of Max von Sydow
The Magic of Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow has spent the past six decades cultivating one of cinema’s most illustrious careers, and now, at eighty-seven, the Swedish actor “may be on the verge of becoming a pop-culture icon,” writes Terrence Rafferty in the Atlantic.

Short Takes — Nov 17, 2015

Explore

Ingmar Bergman

Writer, Director

Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish auteur began his artistic career in the theater but eventually navigated toward film—"the great adventure," as he called it—initially as a screenwriter and then as a director. Simply put, in the fifties and sixties, the name Ingmar Bergman was synonymous with European art cinema. Yet his incredible run of successes in that era—including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, haunting black-and-white elegies on the nature of God and death—merely paved the way for a long and continuously dazzling career that would take him from the daring “Silence of God” trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) to the existential terrors of Cries and Whispers to the family epic Fanny and Alexander, with which he “retired” from the cinema. Bergman died in July 2007, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of work in the history of cinema.

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