
Max von Sydow as Antonius Block, knight Gunnar Björnstrand as Jöns, squire Bengt Ekerot as Death Nils Poppe as Jof Bibi Andersson as Mia, Jof's wife Åke Fridell as Blacksmith Plog Inga Gill as Lisa, blacksmith's wife Erik Strandmark as Jonas Skat (Lisa's lover) The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is a Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, about the journey of a medieval knight across a plague-ridden landscape, and a monumental game of chess between himself and the personification of Death, who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). Here the motif of silence is used to refer to the modern concept of the "silence of God". Bergman had been given the go-ahead for the project from Carl-Anders Dymling at Svensk Filmindustri only after the success at Cannes of Smiles of a Summer Night, and was given a schedule of only thirty-five days, a short time for a film of this nature.
The
Seventh
Seal
Det
sjunde
inseglet
Ingmar
Bergman
Swedish
Film
Max
von
Sydow
Gunnar
Björnstrand
Bengt
Ekerot
Nils
Poppe
Bibi
Andersson
Åke
Fridell
Inga
Gill
Erik
Strandmark