The Seventh Seal

The two book-ending images in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 existential masterpiece The Seventh Seal, Death playing a game of chess and Death’s victims dancing, are two of the most parodied in film, satirized by everyone from Woody Allen to Monty Python and Bill and Ted. It’s likely Bergman himself would have appreciated these parodies. Though The Seventh Seal has a reputation as the most somber of Sweden’s many somber films, no doubt because of its dour subject matter, the film is loaded with humor and levityeven Death himself is more personable than the typical grim reaper, and the film’s ultimate message about finding meaning in the absence of God is at its core an optimistic one. The film screens tonight for free as the final salvo in Marquette’s Foreign Film Festival.