The Seventh Seal

Director: Ingmar Bergman

1957 / 96min / 35mm

The subject of homage by Scott Walker, Last Action Hero (1993), Woody Allen, and countless other artists and artworks, Bergman’s film—with its indelible image of weary knight Max von Sydow seated for a match of chess with Death himself—is the quintessential arthouse blockbuster of the ’50s, the grandly gloomy tale of a Crusader’s return, after 10 fruitless and disillusioning years fighting in the Holy Land, to his native Sweden, only to find his home decimated by the black plague and himself forced to do battle with an opponent that his sword alone is useless against. A passion play that finds the existential quandary of postwar Europe in the continent’s medieval past, and a work of baleful beauty and disarming humanity.