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The Seventh Seal

Original title: Det sjunde inseglet · Turkish title: Yedinci Mühür

“The story of a challenge to death.”

1957 · 1 h 36 min
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
DramaFantasy

Cast

Max von Sydow Gunnar Björnstrand Bengt Ekerot Bibi Andersson

Plot

A knight, Antonius Block, returns from the Crusades to a Sweden stricken by the plague. Death comes for him, and he challenges Death to a game of chess, hoping to delay his fate while seeking an answer to the silence of God. On the road he travels with his squire, and meets a family of travelling performers who embody a simple joy. Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film, with its famous image of the knight and Death on the beach, brought Swedish cinema to a world audience and is one of the best-known art films.

Sinekatalog’s take

A knight plays chess with Death during the plague. Bergman's medieval allegory is stark and thoughtful about faith and mortality, and its images became shorthand for art cinema.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 8.1 / 10 (218,321 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% (73 critic reviews)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset; Rotten Tomatoes snapshot from October 2026. Scores change over time.

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