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The Seventh Seal is probably Bergman's best-known work and the film that most clearly bears the director's unmistakeable signature. The opening scene sets the tone: a stony beach under a leaden sky, the knight alone with his thoughts, then the approach of black-clad Death, whom the knight invites to play a game of chess. Bergman's medieval allegory of faith and doubt is dark with the horrors of witch-burnings and the plague. But it is also shot through with bright flashes of peace and joy, show more symbolised in the milk and wild strawberries offered to the knight by an innocent family of actors. In his compelling appreciation, Melvyn Bragg describes his own first encounter as a student with this extraordinary film, and how it revealed to him another cinema, quite different from the Hollywood he had grown up with. He recounts too his later meeting with Bergman himself, and how the marks of the director's powerful personality are everywhere in this troubling and inspiring masterpiece. show lessTags
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70+ Works 5,626 Members
Melvyn Bragg is a British writer and broadcaster. His novels include The Hired Man, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, Without a City Wall, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Soldier's Return, winner of the WHSmith Literary Award, A Son of War and Crossing the Lines, both of which were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, show more and most recently Grace and Mary. He has also written several works of non-fiction, the latest being The Book of Books about the King James Bible. In 2015, his book The Adventure of English became a New York Times bestseller. He lives in London and Cumbria. (Publisher Provided) show less
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- The Seventh Seal (1957 | IMDb)
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- 791.4372 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Public performances Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Motion pictures Films; screenplays Single films
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- PN1997 .S5223 .B73 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Motion pictures Plays, scenarios, etc.
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