There is nothing particularly original in proclaiming Bergman’s The Seventh Seal to be one of the greatest movies of all time; but I feel compelled to explain why I feel this so strongly. At one level it is a purely visceral reaction. I have seen the film countless times, and I enjoy it more with each viewing. I have to admit, the very first time I saw it I had to overcome years of having viewed Monty Python scenes of witch burnings, plague victims, and dinner calls by the grim reaper — all of which tempted me to laugh at some of the most dramatic scenes, but I still left the theatre awe struck. There is something elemental about the film, and I’d like to try to articulate what that is.
Film critic Roger Ebert describes a scene from the film:
A knight returning from the Crusades finds a rude church still open in the midst of the Black Death, and goes to confession there. Speaking to a hooded figure half-seen through an iron grill, he pours out his heart: “My indifference has shut me out. I live in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of dreams. I want God to put out his hand, show his face, speak to me. I cry out to him in the dark but there is no one there.” The hooded figure turns, and is revealed as Death, who has been following the knight on his homeward journey.
Images like that have no place in the modern cinema, which is committed to facile psychology and realistic behavior.
Ebert goes on to discuss Bergman’s focus on “existential” questions, commenting that “Films are no longer concerned with the silence of God but with the chattering of men.” But when I said that there is something “elemental” about the film, I wasn’t referring to the movie’s themes (death vs. life, doubt vs. faith, etc.) but its cinematic language.
Seeing the film again this weekend, I realized that the film is almost a sort of art history lesson. Through the course of the film we are exposed, not just to Bergman’s own inner turmoil as he faces these existential questions, but also to his own theory about the art of the Middle Ages. Indeed, it turns out that the film was inspired by “a wall painting in a Swedish church.” In fact, he initially wrote it as a play called “A Painting on Wood”!
The film draws us into the psychological and social context within which such a church painting might have been made. In the scene transcribed below, Jons, the Knight’s squire, has a discussion with a painter, who is busy painting the dance of death on the walls of a church:
JONS
What is this supposed to represent?PAINTER
The Dance of Death.JONS
And that one is Death?PAINTER
Yes, he dances off with all of them.JONS
Why do you paint such nonsense?PAINTER
I thought it would serve to remind people that
they must die.JONS
Well, it’s not going to make them feel any
happier.PAINTER
Why should one always make people happy? It
might not be a bad idea to scare them a little
once in a while.JONS
Then they’ll close their eyes and refuse to
look at your painting.PAINTER
Oh, they’ll look. A skull is almost more
interesting than a naked woman.JONS
If you do scare them …PAINTER
They’ll think.JONS
And if they think …PAINTER
They’ll become still more scared.JONS
And then they’ll run right into the arms of the
priests.PAINTER
That’s not my business.JONS
You’re only painting your Dance of Death.PAINTER
I’m only painting things as they are. Everyone
else can do as he likes.JONS
Just think how some people will curse you.PAINTER
Maybe. But then I’ll paint something amusing
for them to look at. I have to make a living
— at least until the plague takes me.
What Bergman manages to do is not simply to evoke the context in which such a painting might have been painted, but at the same time to create a modern cinematic language which conveys these ideas with the same clarity and directness that one finds in Medieval paintings. And, as with work form the Middle Ages, the film is not really a grim film at all (although it certainly has some very grim moments), but is suffused with a bawdy, lusty humor and joy. Maybe its just me, but I’m just as happy to see The Seventh Seal as I am to see a Marx Brothers movie!
Thinking of the film this way makes it very interesting to compare it with another film which sets out to similarly interpret the work of Medieval church paintings: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. Rublev is not my favorite Tarkovsky film. I think it has some amazing moments, and is visually stunning, but I personally prefer Tarkovsky’s more personal films, such as Ivan’s Childhood and The Mirror. I’m not sure why Rublev fails falls short, perhaps it is simply too long — perhaps it is because Swedish Medieval art makes for better movies than Russian Medieval art? Something to think about at any rate!
