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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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The Seventh Seal (1956)

Rating: 2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Pawn Men

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Seventh Seal on DVD

Bergman's most popular and most acclaimed film, yet it doesn't do much for me (I've seen it twice now). Max von Sydow plays a knight returning from the crusades who challenges Death to a chess game. Inbetween moves he witnesses scenes of beauty and death, and gets to know a traveling group of entertainers. It manages some powerful images, but it feels a bit too calculated to really get under the skin. It's really rather juvenile and relies on grandiose theatrical ideas rather than the more subtle cinematic ones Bergman used in later films. It also invented all the silly art house movie clichés that are still parodied to this day (and have not aged well). In 2009, The Criterion Collection released a super-deluxe two-disc DVD set. Also available on Blu-Ray.

Starring: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot
Written by: Ingmar Bergman
Directed by: Ingmar Bergman
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Language: Swedish with English subtitles
Running Time: 96 minutes
Date: June 4, 2001