A title occurs as information to a passage from either the Book of Revelation used at a start of the film, beginning sustaining the words "And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour."

Bergman stated around an locate that a film got helped him overcome his fear of demise.

Synopsis

a knight (von Sydow) is restored from either the Crusades and finds that his home united states is ravaged by the plague. To his dismay, he discovers that Dying (Bengt Ekerot) has come for him as well. Sequentially to find period he challenges Dying to the match of chess, which allows him to email his page & become reunited sustaining his married woman. A knight's faith is broken, & this is stressed within one of a strongest scenes in a pic; whenever a knight gives confession to a priest all about his doubts that God actually lives, he tells the priest how else he plays chess by owning dying you bet he plans to win sole to buy that the "priest" is actually dying. A picture has super Kierkegaardan themes in demise & meaning (view Kierkegaard on despair) and so these are quite experiential. In another mighty scene of a witch burning, the knight is asked by his squire whether he understands God in the victim's eyes or even whether he understands emptiness. A knight trembles & refuses to acknowledge emptiness despite his doubts within God. the knight realises that he would like become broken within faith, suffering constantly of doubt, than to acknowledge a life forgoing meaning.

Under a fateful journeying it encounter many features of mediaeval society & a way it dealt sustaining a fear of dying: penance of flagellators, the burning of a witch and the amusement provided by traveling creative person. Bergman is particularly scalding around his depiction of the clergy, world health organization thrive on the atmosphere of terror engendered per plague. It offer there is no comfort to their humans, & come represented when little better than stealer. A desperate disbelief of a knight & the cynicism of his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) are neatly contrasted to the clean-handed belief of the acrobat (Nils Poppe) and his immature married woman (Bibi Andersson), who together by using their tyke might peradventure exist as emblematic of the holy personal.

Finally, a knight achieves a important work which gives his life meaning, by enabling a escape of the immature few & their infant. When the knight & his followers come led away above a hills within a mediaeval dance of death, the immature personal prove my point their journeying.

Relation to medieval Sweden

A mediaeval Sweden portrayed therein moving picture is does'nt super exact. E.g., flagellators never existed inside Sweden, & a theme of life & dying probably is other average to the existentialism of the 1950s than these are to the feelings & thoughts of mediaeval Swedes.

An image of a human swimming chess by using dying inside the form of the skeleton is in the mediaeval church painting from either the 1480s by Albertus Pictor which can be obtained around Täby kyrka, Täby, north of Stockholm. Bergman hwhen refered to this painting as a inspirational source for this scene in the pic.

Parodies of The Seventh Seal

A Seventh Seal by owning its reflection upon demise (& the meaning of life) became something of a figurehead for "serious" European films & has intrinsically estimated around many more films rather a trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A Seventh Seal likewise features when a film Woody Allen and Shelley Duvall go to see inside Annie Hall. Dying besides makes an appearance inside Allen's film Love and Death. Woody Allen as well makes directly fun of the film within his short story, "Death Knocks" where the human plays Gin Rummy for a risk to survive an additional day. Supplementary recently the Dying character from either a film played a role in the Arnold Schwarzenegger extravaganza Last Action Hero, this time Dying was played by Sir Ian McKellen.

A construct of swimming games by using Dying has been utilized (& spoofed) numerous days since Bergman's motion-picture show. George Coe & Anthony Lover manufactured the short film known as De Duva: A Dove that deliberately spoofed this renowned moving-picture show scene, where the immature few challenge Demise to the game of badminton.

A scene has besides been spoofed within ''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'', in which Bill and Ted beat Death at Battleship and Twister, among other games; and Death constantly changes the terms: best two out of three, best three out of five, etc.

Terry Pratchett's Death from the Discworld book series is also reputed to exist as according to a character from either a film. A Discworld version of Dying dreads swimming emblematical previous games of chess because "he could never remember how the little horse-shaped ones are supposed to move."

Flash cartoon Weebl & Bob parodied this concept in their episode "Art". Dying is portrayed by Monkey, & the characters come sitting in a chess board, patch Weebl & Bob bemoan (naturally) their lack of pie.