The Seventh Seal
In the 1000th edition of In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once seen, stays with you for the rest of your life: the figure of Death playing chess with a Crusader on the rocky Swedish shore. The release of this film in 1957 brought Bergman fame around the world. We see Antonius Block, the Crusader, realising he can’t beat Death but wanting to prolong this final game for one last act, without yet knowing what that act might be. As he goes on a journey through a plague ridden world, his meeting with a family of jesters and their baby offers him some kind of epiphany.
Guests
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Jan Holmberg No other episodes
Director of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Stockholm -
Claire Thomson No other episodes
Professor of Cinema History and Director of the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at University College London -
Laura Hubner No other episodes
Professor of Film at the University of Winchester
Reading list
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The Director
Alexander Ahndoril (trans. Sarah Death) (Granta, 2008) Google Books → -
Images: My Life in Film
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Marianne Ruuth) (Faber and Faber, 1995) Google Books → -
The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate) (Viking, 1988) Google Books → -
The Best Intentions
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate) (Vintage, 2018) Google Books → -
Sunday's Children
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate) (Vintage, 2018) Google Books → -
Private Confessions
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate) (Vintage, 2018) Google Books → -
Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman
Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima (trans. Paul Britten Austin) (Da Capo Press, 1993) Google Books → -
The Seventh Seal: BFI Film Classics
Melvyn Bragg (British Film Institute, 1993) Google Books → -
The Ingmar Bergman Archives
Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius (eds.) (Taschen/Max Strom, 2018) -
Ingmar Bergman: An Enduring Legacy
Erik Hedling (ed.) (Lund University Press, 2021) Google Books → -
The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness
Laura Hubner (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) Google Books → -
Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema
Daniel Humphrey (University of Texas Press, 2013) Google Books → -
Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema, and the Arts
Maaret Koskinen (ed.) (Wallflower Press, 2008) Google Books → -
The Phantom Carriage
Selma Lagerlof (trans. Peter Graves) (Norvik Press, 2011) -
Swedish Film: An Introduction and Reader
Mariah Larsson and Anders Marklund (eds.) (Nordic Academic Press, 2010) Google Books → -
Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art
Paisley Livingston (Cornell University Press, 2019) Google Books → -
Focus on The Seventh Seal
Birgitta Steene (ed.) (Prentice Hall, 1972) Google Books → -
Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide
Birgitta Steene (Amsterdam University Press, 2014) Google Books →
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Programme ID: m001qmkx
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qmkx
Auto-category: 791.43 (Film and cinema)