![]() ![]() The Knight and his Squire attract some wandering actors who share their journey, as well as a Blacksmith and his wife, and a young girl whom Jöns saved from a rape. It is a period of plague and the Knight sets off for his castle, continuing the game in instalments, buying time for a reprieve in doing so. ![]() A chessboard is set up and the figure of Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears to harvest the soul of the Knight, Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow), who challenges Death to a game. ![]() In the 14th Century, a Knight and his Squire return to Sweden from the crusades, and are resting on a remote beach. Bergman cast his regular collaborator Gunnar Björnstrand as Jöns, the Knight's squire, and in the first of what would become 11 films together, Max Von Sydow as the Knight, Antonius Block. The story had formed the basis of a theatre piece he'd written some years before, and the film has the compact intensity of a theatrical presentation, but with the filmic élan of Gunnar Fischer's cinematography. Bergman's previous film from the year before, Smiles on a Summer Night had garnered some attention at Cannes, and this film consolidated his reputation in Europe and spread his name to America and beyond. "To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe" ~ Ingmar BergmanĪfter more than a decade of making fine films in his home country, and with a solid background in theatre too, Ingmar Bergman made his international breakthrough in 1957 with the allegorical The Seventh Seal. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |