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The Seventh Seal

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Few films have had as large a cultural impact as Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet). Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges him to a fateful game of chess. Much studied, imitated, even parodied, but never outdone, Bergman’s stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning was one of the benchmark foreign imports of America’s 1950s art house heyday, pushing cinema’s boundaries and ushering in a new era of moviegoing.

Disc Features

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Introduction by Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003
- Audio commentary by Bergman expert Peter Cowie
- A new afterword to the commentary by Cowie
- Bergman Island (2006), an 83-minute documentary on Bergman by Marie Nyreröd, featuring in-depth and revealing interviews with the director
- Archival audio interview with Max von Sydow
- A 1998 tribute to Bergman by filmmaker Woody Allen
- Theatrical trailer
- Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman’s career, narrated by Cowie
- Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins

ALSO AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

Original DVD:
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Bergman Island

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Just four years before his death, legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman sat down with Swedish documentarian Marie Nyreröd in his home on Fårö Island to discuss his films, his fears, his regrets, and his ongoing artistic passion. This resulted in the most breathtakingly candid series of interviews that the famously reclusive director ever took part in, later edited into the feature-length film Bergman Island. In-depth, revealing, and packed with choice anecdotes about Bergman’s films, as well as his personal life, Nyreröd’s documentary is an unforgettable final glimpse of a man who transformed cinema.

Disc Features

- New, restored digital transfer
- Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman’s career, narrated by Peter Cowie
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A written remembrance by filmmaker Marie Nyreröd

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i really need some explanations about the ending, does it have a strong intertextuality with the Bible, because i'm not familiar with it, since i'm not a Christian-believer, thx

The only explanation I need is why this damn thread only had 1 reply prior to me rplying with this reply.

I remember this title, as well as many others being discussed on earlier encarnations of the forum. There was some in-depth discussion but dissapeared with the change.

yukiyuki wrote:i really need some explanations about the ending, does it have a strong intertextuality with the Bible, because i'm not familiar with it, since i'm not a Christian-believer, thx

OK, I'm very surprised nobody's jumped on this. I hesitate because I'm not a big fan of the Bible either....anyway, listen to the commentary; Peter Cowie does shed some light on it. The only specific thing that I remember is that Gunnel Lindblom's only line ("It is finished") is what Jesus' dying words on the cross were. This is just before Death takes them away.

Other than that, the main theme, of course, is Max von Sydow's search for meaning (after the futility of the Crusades), and he finds it by sacrificing himself, and his band of friends, so that the family can sneak past death and live.

Hopefully others can fill in some blanks, but I haven't watched it in a while, and I forget other specifics from the end.

To (hopefully) answer Yukiyuki's question, the imagery of Seventh Seal has more to do with the imagery of the medieval church than with anything specifically from the Bible itself. Medieval theology is quite complicated and consists of many mythic (in the anthropological sense of the word) additions to what actually exists within the canonical New Testament. (Think Dante here.) In particular, Bergman seems to be picking up on the tradition of the Danse Macabre at the end of the movie. The Danse Macabre (lit. "the dance of death") has its own long tradition within the visual arts and always connotes the universality of death (hitting the high and the low). What makes it work particularly well at the end of Seventh Seal is that the popularization of the Danse Macabre was a result of the Black Death, when for many people the only means of resistance was to celebrate in the face of death. (See Herzog's Nosferatu for interesting reinterpretation.) Probably the most famous contemporary representation of the Danse Macabre is Holbein's:



But there are plenty more on this page.

Hope this is useful.

Do you think that this movie will get rereleased. The DVD does seem a bit bare bones.

Perhaps a rerelease if coming later this year, to coincide with its' fiftieth anniversary? I cannot see Criterion not coming back to this title.

Hopefully it will get a rerelease, it's an important film, and if I'm not mistaken, it's Bergman's personal favorite.

On July 20 The Seventh Seal will be re-released on theaters in England and Australia.

Tartan is offering a R2 remaster in August. No extras

Blu-Ray edition from Tartan .

Person wrote:Blu-Ray edition from Tartan .

Hi Def content is going to be the death of me.

Person wrote:Blu-Ray edition from Tartan .

Can anyone tell me how this is any better from the Criterion release? (Or any other release for that matter).

Holy crap. I hope it isn't region-coded.

So... box set.

Does this mean we won't be seeing a remaster for quite some time?

agnamaracs wrote:Does this mean we won't be seeing a remaster for quite some time?

It was 4 years between the Kurosawa gift set and the remaster of Seven Samurai (and a few months more for Sanjuro and Yojimbo. I think this version of Seventh Seal is it for standard def.

Matt wrote:

agnamaracs wrote:Does this mean we won't be seeing a remaster for quite some time?

It was 4 years between the Kurosawa gift set and the remaster of Seven Samurai (and a few months more for Sanjuro and Yojimbo. I think this version of Seventh Seal is it for standard def.

It would be a nice chance to remaster it and put some decent supplements on it. Really hope they do that. If not: oh well, I still don`t own any of the titles (yeah yeah shame on me) so this is a good release for me.

malcolm1980 wrote:

Person wrote:Blu-Ray edition from Tartan .

Can anyone tell me how this is any better from the Criterion release? (Or any other release for that matter).

According to ellipsis7:

Well Tartan are releasing a new edition of new transfer remastered from the freshly restored camera negative of THE SEVENTH SEAL on R2 UK standard DVD & Blu-Ray on Oct 22nd...

Man, I would love the box set but I can't bring myself to buy it after owning The Seventh Seal already.

Person wrote:Blu-Ray edition from Tartan .

I love the one review one this page: "Its an ok film not amazing". Then the idiot asks "But the thing i dont get is how can a film this old be in high defintion -- you could get the dvd for £5 and im pretty sure the picture would be exactly the same".

Wow, you don't get much more stupid than that. I guess in the 50's film stock was lo-res.

Weirdly, the new Bergman gift set has only the barebones Seventh Seal disc from the "50 Years" Janus box instead of the Criterion SE.

Wonder if they're re-doing the SE, then?

Unbelievable. #-o

This is really frustrating. I was initially disappointed that Seventh Seal was included in the box, as I had hoped for a more lavish re-release somewhere down the road. I figured that it seemed unlikely that they would re-promote a catalog title like this if a new edition was on its way. But now the Janus version is being included instead of the original? That doesn't even begin to make sense, unless there was a mix-up at the replicator's. I'd be curious to hear Criterion's rational for releasing the box this way, assuming it isn't a mistake.

I'm definitely not buying it if it's the Janus release. There better be some explaination. I've been holding off on buying it for too long. We'll see what happens.