The Seventh Seal

(1957) dir Ingmar Bergman w/Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot [96 min; DCP]

Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges him to a fateful game of chess. Much studied, imitated, and parodied, but never outdone, Bergman’s stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning, THE SEVENTH SEAL, was one of the benchmark foreign imports of America’s 1950s art-house heyday, pushing cinema’s boundaries and ushering in a new era of moviegoing.