Story, Characterization, and Themes
Following the credits, a background statement appears on the screen:
It is the middle of the fourteenth century. Antonius Block and his squire after long years as crusaders in the Holy Land have at last returned to their native Sweden. A land ravished by the Black Plague.
Death comes for the Knight on a desolate shore. The specter is persuaded, however, to play a game of chess. Antonius may live as long as the game continues.
The Knight and his Squire (Jons ride inland and encounter their first evidence of the plague--a decaying corpse. They pass a wagon where a juggler (Jof ), his wife (Mia), their child (Mikael), and the actor-director of the company (Skat are asleep. Jof, after he has awakened and left the wagon, has a vision of the Virgin Mary and Child.
The two crusaders have arrived at a church. While Jons talks to a painter who is depicting on the walls of the porch of the church scenes from the plague, the Knight enters the chapel. He confesses to a monk whose face is hidden his religious doubts, his search for manifest evidence of God's existence, and his desire to perform a significant act before he dies. He also describes the strategy of his chess game with Death. The monk turns out to be his opponent. When Antonius and Jons leave the church, they find soldiers guarding a young girl (Tyan) who is accused of being a witch and is to be burned at the stake.
Knight and Squire next stop at a deserted village for water. Jons meets and threatens a renegade priest (Raval), who is robbing corpses. The Girl whom the Squire saves from being raped by Raval agrees to become his housekeeper.
The actors are performing before an inn, with the Knight, the Squire, and the Girl in the audience. Skat goes off with Lisa, the wife of the smith (Plog). Jof and Mia's singing is interrupted by a procession of penitents and a monk's sermon.
Later Jof is bullied by Raval in the dining room of the inn, but is saved by Jons, who brands the renegade priest. Meanwhile, near the inn the Knight enters into a conversation with Mia. Jof, bruised and frightened. arrives and is solaced by his wife. The three sit down to a repast of strawberries and milk; they are joined by Jons and the girl. Antonius is deeply moved by the peacefulness of the moment and with new confidence continues his game of chess with Death.
Before the Knight and his company, which now includes Jof and the juggler's family, leave the inn and enter the forest, Plog, who is searching for his errant wife, attaches himself to Jons. In the forest, they meet Skat and Lisa. To escape the burly smith, the actor pretends to commit suicide. but after the others have left, he is actually taken away by Death. The specter appears again as the group witnesses the burning of Tyan. While they are in the forest, Raval comes to them infected with the plague and dies in agony.
Soon after the death of Raval, the Knight loses his game with Death; however, he is able to divert the specter while Jof, Mia, and their child escape. During a storm that arises, the juggler and his family hide in their wagon.
The Knight and the remainder of the group (Jons, the Girl, Plog, and Lisa) reach his castle and find Antonius's wife (Karin) awaiting him. During dinner Death appears.
In the epilogue, Jof and Mia emerge from the wagon at the edge of a shore. Jof has a vision of his friends dancing in a line led by Death. He and his family move along the shore in the light of a clear dawn.
Analysis
Bergman has cast this tale in a very difficult form: a story with mythic overtones permeated with realistic details. The spine of the mythic dimension is a quest. The Knight is in search of a manifest God, As is typical in such a mythic pattern, his journey is simultaneously a physical one and a spiritual one into his own psyche.
To the events of his physical journey, Antonius Block is chiefly passive. He seems indifferent to the people who join and leave his company. He is not seen on the screen when Jons meets the Girl, the smith asks to accompany the group, Lisa returns to her husband, and Raval dies. Even after the procession of penitents has passed, he makes no comment. The reason for this passivity is obvious: he is so preoccupied with his inner journey that human beings, nature, and art mean little to him. The exceptions to his indifference to reality ( meetings with Tyan and Jof's family, the arrival of Death at his castle ~ are directly related to his quest. The Knight is, therefore, isolated from his fellow man and imprisoned in his dreams and fantasies. He realizes this himself, for he admits to Death in the church that only his search for God is important to him.
Antonius has not always been a selfish seeker after certainty. We are given three glimpses of another type of person. When he speaks of his wife to Mia, we envision a man in love, laughing and happy. Earlier Jons meets Raval in the deserted village and recalls why his master and he went on the crusade. He implies that the Knight was so fervent in his religious belief and so concerned about righting the world's wrongs that, inspired by Raval's sermons, he left his home and remained away for ten years to fight the infidels. Near the end of the film Karin sees in her husband's tired face the traces of the boy who left her.
The Knight traveled into the world and lost his faith in God and man. In the first sequence, we watch Antonius attempt to pray and realize that for him it is an empty gesture. Then comes the moment for him, later described by the Knight in the church, when a human being can no longer avoid facing the question of what his existence and existence itself means. Death arrives, but Antonius Block is granted a reprieve. Between the appearance of Death and the actual death of the Knight how much time elapses? Is it but a matter of seconds and all the adventures of the film a dream, or the half an hour noted in St. John's Revelations, or the hour and a half of viewing time, or the twenty-four hours of cinematic time? In a sense, this question of time is irrelevant, for in the world of the spiritual or the unconscious physical time is suspended; the experiences of the Knight could have occurred in a moment or many hours. All we can be sure of is that a power beyond or within him allows him to embark on his quest.
We have no trouble in identifying Sir Antonius Block as an archetypal figure of the intellectual in search of God. He has lost innocent, unquestioning faith, yet life and death are meaningless to him without faith. He cannot accept an absurd universe, and so he wrestles with shadows and begs them to declare that they are God. The evidence of God that will convince him is more ambiguous than the fact of the quest itself. As an intellectual (a chess player), he does not trust his feelings. Like a fourteenth-century Job, he insists that God reveal Himself, that He speak a word.
It is in sequence IV, when the Knight and Death talk together in the church, that the evidence of God's existence Antonius will accept is enunciated. First, he speaks of "knowledge," then a little later of using his life for one "significant act." We wonder what the relationship is between the existence of God and that significant act, and what he means by the latter.
There is a possible explanation, although we may be attempting to cover Up what could be a weakness in the philosophical foundation of the film. If the universe is absurd--beginning and ending in purposeless accident that is governed as long as it exists by physical laws of cause and effect--then no deed can be meaningful, if one means by this phrase an action that convinces the doer that there is some purpose in existence. (It is worth noting; that "significant act" is the translation of the Swedish that appears in the subtitles of the film, whereas in the script published by Simon and Schuster, the phrase appears as "meaningful act.") The logic of the Knight might be that if he can perform an act that he considers meaningful, then the universe is not entirely absurd, some power beyond the physical is controlling our lives. This seems rather an equivocal proof of God's existence, depending as it does on individual evaluation. The Knight, however, is desperate and strains to hear even in the slightest sound what he can identify as the authentic voice of God. In any case, as we will see, Antonius does not accept finally his significant deed as the evidence he seeks.
It is in sequence IX that the Knight is next at center stage. We know his conflict; now we observe the first possibility of a direction toward resolution. He speaks to Mia and meets Jof and Mikael. He is greatly moved by the experience. For the first time since his quest began that morning, he has encountered human love, simplicity, and faith. Still, his rhapsodizing about a sign and a great content seems rather extravagant. On the other hand, he is, as we just noted, desperate for signs. His reaction may be similar to that of a man who has been on a desert for days without anything to drink and when rescued honestly praises the bouquet and flavor of a glass of water. Perhaps the best way to approach the sequence is to consider it as symbolic as the milk and strawberries.
Anyone who has viewed Bergman's Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring will recognize that strawberries are a personal symbol for the director of guiltlessness and goodness. There is another parallel between The Seventh Seal and other Bergman films, particularly Wild Strawberries (discussed in the next chapter of this book). In the latter film, the two Saras and Marianne point Isak Borg toward psychic salvation. It is, as in the later film, a woman in The Seventh Seal who helps a despairing man when no one else can.
Antonius, then, recognizes Jof and his family as of great value: an oasis of goodness and innocence in a desert of selfishness and guilt. When he leaves them at the end of sequence IX to continue his game, he concludes from a seemingly casual remark made by Death that they are threatened. It is in the forest that this veiled danger seems to become real.
Two sequences later, after the death of Raval, the Knight is losing his game of chess. He is also being defeated because he has not so far gained anything from his reprieve. At that very moment an opportunity presents itself. From the point of view of the Knight, in some inexplicable way, Jof is aware of the presence of Death; as objective viewers, we see that the juggler has a vision that prompts him to attempt to escape. The Knight decides to help. Although Death remarks that nothing and no one escapes him, Antonius obviously feels that by appearing accidentally to knock over the chessmen, he gives Jof and his family a chance to flee.
The Knight has performed his significant act and now should be truly content. Yet he continues to question Death just before the specter leaves. In the castle at Antonius's last moment, he cries to God for mercy. As we point out in our analysis of this penultimate sequence, he is asking God to reveal Himself before it is too late. As far as we know, the silence is not broken. The Knight has failed in his quest and in the end, with the others, he dances to the tune of Death.
We are once again confronted with the possibility that the philosophical underpinnings of The Seventh Seal are shaky. The Knight informs Death that he wishes for a reprieve in order to perform a significant act, yet when he does so, it seems to make no difference to him. If we have faith in Bergman as a script writer and director, we begin to question whether the Knight's quest is other than appears on the surface. Antonius maintains that life is absurd unless God manifests Himself to the human intellect. Is it possible that this premise is wrong? Could it be that in the context of the film God reveals his presence by the very existence of love in the world, and one of the forms of love is when a person without thought of his own advantage, out of sheer altruism, acts for others? From this perspective, what Antonius does for Jof and his family is a significant act, a meaningful act, an act of love, a revelation of God.
The Knight thus has failed in his quest only in terms of the conditions he has set; actually, although he does not recognize it, he has succeeded. He is almost completely selfish until he helps Jof, Mia, and Mikael. The basic problem of the Knight is not that God does not reveal Himself, but that Antonius is so confined by his intellect. He is so preoccupied with crying and whispering his questions that he cannot hear the still, small voice of God and cannot realize that in his case the Almighty has been merciful.
If we consider the film objectively, we may not only be critical of the Knight's spiritual blindness, but also of the script. The significant act of Antonius would have been more meaningful if it had involved more of a sacrifice on his part. He is only one move away from defeat when he knocks over the chessmen. By his act, he personally loses nothing. Would it not have been more dramatic, although admittedly more obvious, for Antonius to have lost some advantage in time or position by his gesture. Of course, one of the pleasures of criticism is hindsight; it avoids the problems of implementing a supposed improvement in a work of art.
Antonius Block is the chief character in the film, but not the only one of interest. Each person, however, is related to the Knight's quest, for the search for God--or more generally, the search for meaning in life and, therefore, of death--is a touchstone that reveals how each individual reacts to his circumambient universe. The ways of the other characters are principally in contrast to the way the Knight has chosen to deal with a problem that every human being must confront in one way or another, to one degree or another.
The Squire Jons seems to have found an answer: there is no God and the universe is absurd. His commitment is to life and the pleasures of the senses. Because he does not doubt and question, he is a man of action. He deals with Raval in the deserted village and at the inn as efficiently as we are sure he could, if he wished, dispatch the soldiers that guard Tyan. An earthy Sancho Panza to his master, a spiritual Don Quixote, he is a pragmatist.
On the other hand, Jons is neither stupid nor selfish. As he tells Plog, he is an educated man, and reveals it in his wit and verbal facility. He sees through hypocrisy, conceit, and the necessary pretenses that govern such a relationship as that of the smith and Lisa. His intelligence prevents him from being arrogant and self-centered. He can even laugh at himself, as when he denies Plog's assertion that he believes his own nonsense. This very intelligence, however, combined with another quality --compassion--makes him vulnerable. He is not a happy man, for he is aware of the differences between what is and what should be and he feels the suffering of his fellow creatures. At the church, he is appalled at what the plague does to people physically and emotionally, he helps the Girl in the village and defends Jof in the inn, he must turn away from Tyan burning at the stake and makes no pretense that he is indifferent to the agony of the dying Raval.
As the vision of the Knight is restricted by his intellect, so the Squire has limitations. His cynicism prevents him from admitting to the existence of anything beyond the physical world; he cannot enter the church but only go as far as its porch. There is no evidence that he appreciates the special qualities of Jof and Mia. Although he obviously admires Antonius, he is unsympathetic to the Knight's prodding and searching, and feels compelled to disabuse his master of any illusions. After the procession of the penitents, at the burning of Tyan, at the appearance of Death at the castle, Jons acts as a one-man chorus in a play by Euripides arguing with the main protagonist.
The chief justification for the view of a number of critics that The Seventh Seal is an existentialist film lies in the character of Jons. The fourteenth-century Squire would have no trouble understanding a philosophy which advocates that existence precedes essence, that the human condition is absurd, that man is free to create his own values, and that the man of good faith must engage in actions for which he accepts responsibility. The Squire's last words in the film might serve as an epigraph for any book on existentialism: "Yes, [I accept death], but under protest." It is thus understandable that many viewers identify more easily with Jons than Antonius Block and consider him the true hero of the film.
As is appropriate to a clown of God, Jof is less complex than the Knight and his Squire. One can easily imagine him reincarnated a couple of centuries later as Barnaby, our Lady's juggler, described in the story by Anatole France. His innocence is real and his faith complete. He is not, however, a plastic saint. He sings bawdy songs (as well as composes sacred ones), is hardly a personification of courage in the inn, and steals Raval's bracelet, then allows his wife to believe that he bought it for her. Jof is taken advantage of by Skat and bullied by Raval. Perhaps in compensation for being put upon by other human beings, he has been granted the gift of visions. In our analysis of the last sequence of the film, we discuss the validity of his visions. Whether they are genuine or not, he does have insight into the danger of death accompanying the Knight, and in his final, cosmic fantasy, confused and inexplicable though his identification of the dancing figures may be, he senses the power of Death to cleanse his victims of suffering.
It is, however, the juggler's first vision that reveals most clearly his role in the philosophical substratum of the film. Once again, we have dealt in greater detail with this point in our analysis of the scene. Both visually and through the background music Bergman conveys to us that Jof's feelings for the Virgin and for his wife are two forms of the same impulse. In other words, he does not distinguish in his reactions, as in the case of the Knight, between the divine and the human; both are permeated by a love that sustains and exhilarates him.
Yet, Jof, too, has his limitations. Although he does entertain people and compose songs, manifestations of his goodness and what he gains from the perceptions of his inner vision are basically confined to himself and his family. Unlike Jons, the compassionate man of action, he makes no attempt to help his fellow man. In horror, but without stirring or comment, he watches the procession of penitents, the burning of Tyan, and the death of Raval.
An ideal person, the complete human being, would be one who possesses a combination of the virtues of Antonius Block, Jons, and Jof. Unfortunately, on this earth such an ideal rarely appears. We are fragmented and incomplete, and we need to recognize and respect the strengths of others to compensate for our own weaknesses. And this may be just the point Bergman is making in his characterizations of the three major figures in the film.
Mia comes closer to the ideal of a woman than the three as individuals to that of an exemplary man. We are referring, however, to a masculine ideal that a modern feminist would not be likely to endorse. Mia is lovely and sensual with an innate dignity and graciousness that is especially revealed in her conversation with the Knight. She is clear-headed and practical, so that she is skeptical about Jof's visions. Yet her love for her husband is so deep and secure that she can verbalize it without embarrassment. She even mocks him gently, for example, when he pretentiously points out to the Knight his responsibilities as director of the company after Skat has disappeared. Although Mia may question her husband, she fundamentally respects his visions and submits to his decisions. This submissiveness extends to life itself. She does not question (as the Knight), protest (as Jons, or go beyond the immediate and the real (as Jof). Existence is simply to be accepted and enjoyed. To the Knight she says that things are nearly always nice for her, one day is like another, and she cannot understand why people torture themselves. We sense that as long as she has her son and husband, food and shelter, she will be happy.
This contented creature, however, can serve a very positive function for men. She solaces their wounded bodies and spirits; she represents the eternal feminine, the great mother figure, the "anima." As we noted earlier, this type of woman appears frequently in Bergman's films. In sequence IX, Mia tends her husband after he has been battered at the inn and revives him. Even more important in the context of the film, she encourages the Knight to speak of past happiness and by example, comment, and her very presence leads him out of his self-centeredness to an awareness of love in the world that will enable him to perform his significant act.
Bergman took a risk in making Jof, Mia, and Mikael such an apparent reflection of the Holy Family (at least he did not name the child Immanuel). We are not offended, however, by this obvious association because husband and wife in their own rights are fallible, real individuals. Still, we do sometimes feel uneasy about the way the director manipulates the family to serve the purposes of the symbolic meaning.
The minor characters in The Seventh Seal are straightforward and unambiguous, with one exception that we will consider in a moment. Plog the smith is dim-witted, crude, and clumsy. His love for his wife and desire to have her back is more pitiful than admirable. He does however, at one moment earn our respect when he faces Death in the castle with unassuming dignity. Lisa, his wife, is a selfish wanton. One can understand her sensual needs and desertion of Plog, whose flaccid nature encourages such cruelty, but it is difficult to be indulgent toward a woman who urges her husband to kill a lover who has disappointed her. Skat, actor and ineffectual lover, is a comic character even at the moment of his death.
Raval is definitely not a comic figure. He is so evil and cowardly that he is almost unbelievable. Yet, we are drawn to imagine what led him from being a priest recruiting for a crusade to his present state, and we cannot help but feel pity for the man in agony dying from the plague. Tyan is also a victim of the plague, but it is her own delusions and the fears of her age that destroy her rather than Pasteurella bacilli.
We can add to a betrayed husband, a trollop, a conceited actor, a villain, and a hysterical girl the following: a cynical painter, a group of guilt-ridden flagellants led by a sadistic monk, soldiers who are willing to burn a young girl for pay, and diners at an inn that are insensitive and cruel. This is hardly a cast of characters to encourage an optimistic view of human nature.
The plague in the film is obviously, as in Albert Camus's novel The Plague, not simply a disease, but a personification of the destructive forces inherent in the human condition. As such, it is a test of the inner strength and values of individuals The conclusion we can draw from The Seventh Seal is that Bergman's view of the majority of human beings, at least at the time he created the film, was predominantly negative.
In contrast, but not counterbalancing this motley crew, whose qualities range from the best of ineffectualness to the worst of evil, are the four major characters and two others (the faithful dog by his dead master is not a character, but is more admirable than most of the human beings in the film). Karin, the Knight's wife, is a true lady of a castle in bearing, self-possession, dignity, and courage. We assume that she has directed the activities of the castle herself for ten years. Although a plague is raging, she remains at home in the center of danger awaiting her husband's return. When Death appears, it is she who moves to the front of the group and courteously welcomes him. Even when she sees her husband for the first time in a decade, Karin preserves her reserve. We sense that this reserve is not evidence of a cold woman, but rather of a passionate one in control of herself. She says that she sees in the Knight's eyes the boy who left on a crusade. We see in the small smile, affectionate look, and gesture with which she touches her husband's cheek, a momentary vision of the Knight's description of her to Mia as a maiden in love filling the castle with laughter and song.
The other significant woman in the film is the exception we referred to earlier to straightforward and unambiguous minor characters. We know nothing about the background of the Girl who may be mute that Jons finds in the deserted village. Until the penultimate sequence, we find expressed in her handsome face only fear ( as the procession of penitents passes and during the trip through the forest) and compassion (at the deaths of Tyan and Raval). Yet, she seems to be sensitive to the nuances of what is happening around her. At the picnic of milk and strawberries in front of the actors' wagon, she stares at Mia and the knight as they talk.
It is in sequence XII that her sensitivity is fully revealed. From the moment that the knight and his friends enter the castle, there are more close-ups of her than any of the others. Her eyes move restlessly along the hallways and rooms of the castle as though she were searching for someone the others could not see. She is the first to see Death; she delivers the last words (the only time she speaks) of the film before the epilogue; and her face is the last on the screen in the scene.
We have speculated in our analysis of this sequence on what Bergman might be trying to convey through the Girl (never given a proper name in the credits or the film). She appears to welcome Death and the sentence she speaks associates her with Jesus before he died on the cross. In addition, she is not among those described by Jof as dancing with Death. All this suggests that her life has been one of suffering and death is a release. We feel, however, that in the case of the Girl Bergman has teased us intellectually and promised more visually than he has delivered emotionally. She remains an enigma for us. There is nothing wrong with enigmatic characters in a film except when they are clearly intended to carry a meaning and are too insubstantial to bear the burden.
Death, as with the others, is a character in the film, but also a specter and a force. How can we speak of motivation in a figure who is beyond freedom or compulsion? He does at moments reveal echoes of human qualities. He seems intrigued by the challenge of the chess game. He jokes with Skat as he cuts down the tree. He seems to sympathize with the suffering of the Knight as he listens to him in the chapel. He seems to enjoy deflating the contentment of Antonius at their third meeting with a question about Jof and his family. "Seems"--we cannot avoid this qualifier when referring to the intentions of Death.
The main problem concerning Death is whether he is to any degree a free agent or is completely controlled by an omniscient and omnipotent deity that has already planned every move of the game of life. Evidence for the latter view includes Death's own statement that there are no secrets and he knows nothing, although he is infuriatingly ambiguous in everything he states and we share the Knight's sense of frustration. We wonder why Jof and his family are allowed to live, for nothing and no one escapes Death. Or were they never threatened? Death has only insinuated that they were in danger. Perhaps they were not destined to die at this time. In that case, Antonius gained nothing for them by his ruse. Perhaps everything that happens to the Knight during his journey was staged (it is possible that the entire film is a dream), so that Antonius is allowed, although he does not recognize it, to find salvation by an act of love.
On the other hand, if Death is not a free agent, why does he trick the Knight into revealing his strategy? Or is it possible that Death is a natural force, a manifestation of the rhythms of nature that has no purpose beyond regeneration of itself? As we will point out in "Analysis of Major Sequences," one of the most repeated visual motifs in the film is the passing of man and his works while nature persists.
Antonius Block, directly and obliquely, wrestles with these questions and suppositions. He finds only silence. But we, also, the viewers of The Seventh Seal, confront the same enigmas and contradictions and find that Bergman, the creator of the film, is also silent. In essence, this is the major criticism that has been leveled against the film. We can better focus on this often-repeated objection if we first recognize a major structural device in the film that profoundly influences what meanings are conveyed to us.
Contrast so permeates this film that it becomes a theme. Types of contrast, manifested in the elements of the narrative, the visual, and the auditory include the following: illusion versus reality, nature versus man, skepticism versus faith, emotions versus intellect, courage versus cowardice, selfishness versus compassion, and lust versus love. Bergman, thus, has made use of a multiform dialectic in the Hegelian sense (thesis-- antithesis--synthesis) The problem is whether or not he has presented the first two stages of a dialectic without achieving the third. In other words, has he simply presented opposing ideas and emotions that bewilder us rather than lead us to new insights into man's relationships with himself and "the Other"? Each viewer must answer this question for himself. We feel that in the end the director has not synthesized his numerous dichotomies
In defense of Bergman, we should take into account that he may never have intended to give us answers but only to pose questions. We may be expecting too much from an hour and a half motion picture. A film is not a philosophical treatise but an emotional and intellectual experience. Few viewers would deny that The Seventh Seal moves and provokes us and reinforces our faith that cinema molded by an artist can do more than solely stimulate our ocular and auditory nerves. That we expect so much from the film and are tempted to consider how it might have been made more coherent and meaningful is a compliment that any director should receive with pride.
Style and Approach
Viewers preoccupied with the evasive and provocative subject matter of Ingmar Bergman's major films have often not recognized that in his use of cinematic techniques he is one of the most imaginative directors of our time. Although his style may not have the obvious experimental tone of works by Orson Welles, Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, and Stanley Kubrick, in his own way he has been as innovative as these directors. During a period of apprenticeship in which he directed nineteen films, culminating in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), his approach, as he has admitted, was eclectic. With The Seventh Seal he emerged as a mature and significant director. In the two decades that have followed, he has explored means of presenting in cinematic terms the relation between dreams and reality; myth; insanity; the counterpoint of sound and silence; the lengthy close-up and monologue as objective correlatives for inner turmoil; color as a reflection of psychic states; and many other themes. If one can speak of so protean a director as Bergman having a main thrust in his style and approach, it might seem to be to move the camera closer and closer to a character, even, in a sense, to enter into his or her psyche without losing control and objectivity, as often happens in the case of expressionistic and surrealistic film makers.
Bergman's achievements cannot be separated from the special advantages that he has enjoyed in Sweden. He has had producers, especially Allan Ekelund, who have supported financially his self-expression without excessive regard for commercial viability. In Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist he found cameramen of exceptional talent and responsiveness to his needs. The actors and actresses he gathered together form an almost unique repertory film group. He has encouraged and received magnificent performances from Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, and Liv Ullmann.
Although Bergman has employed other writers ( as in The Virgin Spring), usually he has written his own scenarios. The scripts that have been translated into English and published in the United States offer problems. Bergman had ambitions in his youth of being a playwright, and his critics maintain that his own scripts are often more literary than cinematic. It is true that as a writer of dialogue he does include on occasion abstract language that works counter to rather than in support of the visual images, and he can strain for poetic literary effects that become self-conscious and even pretentious. It is, naturally, unfair to be critical of the language in Bergman's scripts without knowing Swedish but it is Swedish critics who have been harshest in their judgments of the director's literary contribution to his films. (See, for example, Harry Schein's essay, "Bergman, the Poet," included in Focus on "The Seventh Seal," Englewood, New Jersey, 1972).
This is not to say that Bergman is incapable of fusing words and language into an aesthetic unity. The scene, for instance, in Winter Light between Tomas and Marta in the schoolroom is, in our opinion, beyond criticism. What we are suggesting is that Bergman's dialogue can be a weakness in his films.
Another difficulty with the director's printed scripts is his intention to have them function as literary works as well as shooting scripts. His descriptions of what is happening and comments on the feelings of the characters can conflict with what a reader imagines and what he as a viewer actually sees on the screen. Even more unfortunate is the fact that there are not only significant differences between script and print in what is said, but even in the order of sequences. In The Seventh Seal, for example, the burning of Tyan occurs in the script before the meeting of the Knight's company with Skat and Lisa, whereas these scenes are in reverse order on the screen.
These background comments are necessary if we want to see Bergman's style and approach in The Seventh Seal in perspective. In the first section of this chapter we described the film as "a story with mythic overtones permeated with realistic details." Bergman is relentless in his attempt to present an age realistically. This applies not only to costumes and settings, but also to the smallest detail of action. When a man slaps at a fly on his face, and then takes his hand away, we see the stain of the squashed bug on his cheek. The same realism is apparent on a larger scale, in what can be seen as a parallel situation to the sudden death of a fly, when we watch and hear a man dying of the plague.
The mythic dimension must have offered difficulties to the director. Bergman could have presented Death with expressionistic distortion as Fritz Lang did in Destiny (Der Mude Tod). Instead, Death and Jof's visions are as real to us as they are to the Knight and the juggler. This becomes characteristic of Bergman, for he will use the same approach for the dreams in Wild Strawberries; the transformation of Alma into Elisabet in Persona; and the resurrection in Cries and Whispers.
The director is equally restrained considering his subject matter in his use of the camera. We have already analyzed Bergman's cinematic techniques in the sequence of the procession of the penitents. We suggested in those pages that although he used various camera angles and shots of different duration, the impression of frenetic camera movement is more illusion than actuality. He can speed up the rhythm of his scenes (as when Jof dances on the table of the inn) or slow it down (as in the scene between the Knight and Death in the chapel). The point we are making is that Bergman is in complete control of his cinematic techniques. We might not always approve of the way he applies them, but we rarely feel that he is using impressive devices to distract our attention from his own uncertainty as to how to achieve the effects he desires.
One special device that appears in The Seventh Seal is superimposition (see sequence I) or dissolves from one shot to another that are so gradual that they are almost superimpositions (the opening and closing shots of sequence XI). This technique is used especially for contrast. In the first section of this chapter, we discussed contrast as a theme and in the second section repeatedly pointed out visual examples. Contrast, on both levels, as interdependent as two sides of a coin, is so fundamental to this film that an exhaustive study of this theme-technique would encompass practically all aspects of The Seventh Seal.
We have already discussed the weaknesses in Bergman's dialogue and the difficulties with the published script. There are two other elements of the film we would like to mention. The acting is superb. In a film that needs all the help it can get to be convincing, Bergman was fortunate that his performers were so capable. Even the minor actors are believable, but the most memorable performances are offered by Bengt Ekerot in the difficult role of Death, Gunnar Bjornstrand as Jons, Max von Sydow as Antonius, and Nils Poppe as Jof.
We cannot render the same praise to Erik Nordgren's score for the background music. In our opinion, it is fustian and full of clichés. Some of the scenes in the forest border on the visually melodramatic, and therefore it is especially disturbing that the composer chose to batter our sensibilities with sledgehammer chords. One is particularly grateful, after being subjected to such musical bombast, for the picnic scene and the last scene of the film in which only a lute is heard on the sound track.
There is a question pertinent to this film that illustrates what seems to be the idee fixe of hostile Bergman critics: Is the subject matter of a film such as The Seventh Seal intrinsically uncinematic? This may seem a strange question to ask about a film that contains the procession of penitents sequence, but one can understand what these critics are focusing on.
Let us consider from this point of view the scene in the church when the Knight talks to Death. Previously we were given few clues as to what is disturbing Antonius. The most suggestive visual image is his kneeling to pray in sequence I. To appreciate the Knight's dilemma, he must tell us that he seeks a manifest God; if there is no Almighty, then the universe is absurd; and that he wishes to perform a significant deed before he dies. How could a film maker possibly present such abstract ideas in visual terms? The answer, of course, is that he cannot. It is the conclusion many critics draw from this fact that is suspect.
Since the early 1930s, sound has been an integral part of cinema. As we have pointed out in the "Perspective" sections in this book, "The Silent Film" and "Sound in Film,'' the dimension of sound, especially dialogue, increased the potentials of cinema. Naturally, a thirty-minute philosophical discussion between two people is inappropriate to a film because this mode of expression can be dealt with more efficiently in other media, such as print. This is why film adaptations of novels and plays that are too faithful to their originals are so often failures. There is, however, nothing intrinsically uncinematic about a lengthy monologue or dialogue. The relevant questions are whether or not such a scene itself is visually dynamic and if elsewhere in the film the ramifications of the ideas are presented in ways that are unique to the cinema medium.
In The Seventh Seal Bergman meets our first criterion. He uses dynamic montage in the scene in the chapel, such as cutting from the face of Antonius to Christ on the cross and back. However, the most crucial section of the scene is a lengthy shot of approximately two minutes in which the two actors barely move. In future films the director increasingly uses such lengthy, static shots, but always in a context that justifies their presence. In our judgment he also effectively presents the ramifications of the ideas in cinematic terms. There are few scenes in the film including the conversations between Death and the Knight and between Antonius and Mia, that are visually unexciting.
Yet, we also agree with those critics who do not find The Seventh Seal entirely successful. We feel that the director attempts to encompass too much in an hour and a half, and the metaphysical ideas in the film are often fragmented and inconsistent. It is not that the subject matter is uncinematic. Bergman simply has not spent enough time on the intellectual foundations of his film, so that some concepts sag badly and the retaining walls of logic in a number of scenes show a network of crevices and cracks.
If The Seventh Seal, or other Bergman films, is marred by experiments that failed and visions that are unrealized, it is because Bergman is continually testing the potentials of cinematic art. This quality-- the ability to create scenes and sequences and even films that are completely successful--and the possession of a unique style and approach are the hallmarks of a great director.