Editor's Note: This is the first part in a weekly series examining forgotten films.
Certain movies are historical oddities. Nearly everyone knows of their legacy indirectly, but few have actually watched them. If the idea of playing chess with the Grim Reaper is familiar to you, but you've never watched a Swedish film called "The Seventh Seal" (1957), then I've just proven my point.
Aside from medieval paintings, the idea of challenging death to a game of chess (or any game, for that matter) was first presented to modern day audiences in this movie. But if you're like me, you shamefully saw this idea parodied in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" (1991) before you saw Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."
At the Jones Media Center the film is only available on two 12-inch "videodisks" and is, unsurprisingly, in storage. Other black and white classics like "Rashomon" (1950), "The Third Man" (1949) and "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) are available on DVD and are constantly placed on reserve for film classes. But despite whatever reason "Seal" slipped out of the public eye, its images and ideas still remain.
Aside from its historical significance and the cachet that comes with obscurity, is "The Seventh Seal" a good film? Undoubtedly, yes. This is an old, black-and-white movie for people who dislike old, black-and-white movies.
The premise for this film is quite simple. A knight returns from the Crusades back to his homeland and finds it ravaged by the bubonic plague. There he meets the Grim Reaper -- a pale, stoic man in a black robe. Instead of accepting death immediately, the knight decides to challenge Death himself to a game of chess. If that doesn't hint at serious, artsy symbolism, I don't know what does.
But this is actually one of the remarkable strengths of this film. "The Seventh Seal" doesn't make its heavy symbolism integral to understanding the film. Rather, the symbolism is played out largely in the background. This movie is first and foremost a fairy tale that modern viewers might liken to "Pan's Labyrinth" (2006). Unlike the juxtaposition of the childish imagined world with a brutal reality, however, "The Seventh Seal" seamlessly mixes the two into an unnervingly realistic adventure.
The plot of "Seal" has the flavor of an archaic children's tale but is soaked with such bleakness and hopelessness that can only be portrayed in black and white. Yet somehow this dark atmosphere never seems depressing. It is so overarching that it simply feels like an inescapable reality, a documentary of the Middle Ages in the form of a fairy tale.
Even if you don't appreciate the knight and his squire's recurring philosophical ponderings, the film is shot so beautifully that it can hold the attention of anyone with an eye for aesthetics. It is, after all, written and directed by the reknowned Ingmar Bergman. Whatever the scene, it holds the viewer's complete attention.
This is not to say that this film is without its flaws. The actors are largely unremarkable. Instead, it's the circumstances of the plot that influence you on an emotional level.
The film is a remarkable dance of death that faithfully recreates the grotesque and unnerving medieval paintings of the Black Death. Bergman manages to convert the peculiar sentiment of this type of medieval art into a masterful full-length film. Though almost forgotten, "The Seventh Seal" is certainly worth reconsidering.
