The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish
drama-
fantasy film written and directed by
Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the
Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval
knight (
Max von Sydow) and a game of
chess he plays with the
personification of Death (
Bengt Ekerot), who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play
Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the
Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when
the Lamb had opened the
seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour". Here the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God," which is a major theme of the film.