Where to watch The Seventh Seal (1957)

Trivia & production notes

• Ingmar Bergman originally wrote The Seventh Seal as a stage play called Wood Painting in 1953-1954 for acting students at Malmö City Theatre, which premiered on radio in 1954 before becoming the film.
• The studio initially rejected the screenplay, but the head of Svensk Filmindustri greenlit the project only after Bergman's previous film Smiles of a Summer Night succeeded at Cannes.
• Bergman rewrote the script five times while working within a tight constraint of just 35 days and a budget of $150,000.
• Actor Bengt Ekerot, who had directed the original stage version of Wood Painting in Stockholm, later played Death in the film adaptation.
• The chess scene between Death and the Knight and the final dance of death were the only two scenes shot outside the studio, filmed at Hovs Hallar, a rocky beach area in northwestern Scania.
• The iconic penultimate dance of death shot was filmed hastily before an actual dark cloud dissolved, requiring assistants, electricians, and even two summer visitors who didn't know what they were filming to dress as actors.
• Bibi Andersson and Max von Sydow, who played the juggler's wife and the knight respectively, both became key members of Bergman's recurring ensemble of actors.
• The film's title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation about the end of the world, which Bergman used both at the beginning and end of the film.
• In the original radio play version of Wood Painting, the figure of Death was represented by silence and absence rather than by an actor.
• Bergman was influenced by works including Picasso's painting of two acrobats, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, and frescoes at Swedish churches, and had recently directed Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Everyman for radio before filming.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Seventh Seal, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.