Tuesday, September 26---One of the iconic images in international cinema is the sight of the Grim Reaper, the devil who seperates the spirit from the body of men, playing a strategic game of chess with a Knight during the Black Plague in Ingmar Bergman's landmark 1957 film THE SEVENTH SEAL. A new 35mm film print of this venerable film classic will be screened as part of the 50 Years of Janus Films celebration at this year's New York Film Festival.

Legendary actor Max Von Sydow, one of the actors most associated with the Bergman oeuvre, plays Antonius Block, a Knight returning from the Crusades who is heading home while the Black Death is sweeping his country. Death appears to him to tell him it is his time to enter the underworld. The Knight challenges Death to a game of chess for his life. The Knight and Death make their moves on the chess board, as the turmoil and social disintegration of the Plague envelops them. Death is played by veteran actor Bengt Ekerot, whose career spanned some of Sweden's most important films of the 1940s through the 1960s.

The film was highly praised in its day and has been included on many of the Ten Best Films Ever Made lists since. It won the Jury Special Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Palm that year, the first time a Bergman film was so prized.

Bergman, now retired, remains one of the few living lions of world cinema. He is a director who never goes out of style. Since his breakthrough in the early 1950s, and through his classic existential works of the 1960s and 1970s, his meditative dramas on the human condition are universal and beyond time. While sometimes characterized as pessimistic and unrelievedly depressing, Bergman's films often contain aspects of dark humor, serendipity and unexpected satire. As one of his most famous fans, Woody Allen has paid hommage to the Master in his more "serious" films, such as INTERIORS, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY, ANOTHER WOMAN, SEPTEMBER and HUSBANDS AND WIVES.

Ingmar Bergman on the cover of Time Magazine (1960)

Over his long career, the director has received numerous accolades, including Oscar nods both for direction and writing for his film classics WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961), CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972), FACE TO FACE (1976), AUTUMN SONATA (1978) and FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982). His films THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960), CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972) and FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) each won Best Foreign Language Oscars in their years of their release, generally by distributor honoree Janus Films (now available on dvd via the Criterion Collection).

THE SEVENTH SEAL will screen at the 44th New York Film Festival on Saturday, September 30 at 3:00pm, Monday, October 2 at 2:00pm and Tuesday, October 3 at 5:30pm at the Walter Reade Theater.

Sandy Mandelberger
Festivals Editor