The Seventh Seal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ingmar Bergman's influential film from 1957 in which a knight plays chess with Death in the hope of living long enough to do something meaningful
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鈥檛 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.
With
Jan Holmberg
Director of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Stockholm
Claire Thomson
Professor of Cinema History and Director of the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at University College London
And
Laura Hubner
Professor of Film at the University of Winchester
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Alexander Ahndoril (trans. Sarah Death), The Director (Granta, 2008)
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Marianne Ruuth), Images: My Life in Film (Faber and Faber, 1995)
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography (Viking, 1988)
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), The Best Intentions (Vintage, 2018)
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), Sunday鈥檚 Children (Vintage, 2018)
Ingmar Bergman (trans. Joan Tate), Private Confessions (Vintage, 2018)
Stig Bj枚rkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima (trans. Paul Britten Austin), Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman (Da Capo Press, 1993)
Melvyn Bragg, The Seventh Seal: BFI Film Classics (British Film Institute, 1993)
Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius (eds.), The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Taschen/Max Str枚m, 2018)
Erik Hedling (ed.), Ingmar Bergman: An Enduring Legacy (Lund University Press, 2021)
Laura Hubner, The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Daniel Humphrey, Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2013)
Maaret Koskinen (ed.), Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema, and the Arts (Wallflower Press, 2008)
Selma Lagerl枚f (trans. Peter Graves), The Phantom Carriage (Norvik Press, 2011)
Mariah Larsson and Anders Marklund (eds.), Swedish Film: An Introduction and Reader (Nordic Academic Press, 2010)
Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Cornell University Press, 2019)
Birgitta Steene (ed.), Focus on The Seventh Seal (Prentice Hall, 1972)
Birgitta Steene, Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide (Amsterdam University Press, 2014)
Last on
More episodes
Previous
New to In Our Time? Here are ten great places to start
With 1000 episodes available, executive editor John Goudie offers ten recommendations.
Featured
-
.
Guests and related links
Contributors
-听 at UCL
- at the Ingmar Bergman Foundation听听
- at the University of Winchester听
听
Related Links听
-
-听
Broadcasts
- Thu 21 Sep 2023 09:00麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4
- Thu 21 Sep 2023 21:30麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4
Featured in...
Culture—In Our Time
Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.
In Our Time podcasts
Download programmes from the huge In Our Time archive.
The In Our Time Listeners' Top 10
If you鈥檙e new to In Our Time, this is a good place to start.
Arts and Ideas podcast
Download the best of Radio 3's Free Thinking programme.
Podcast
-
In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.