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Title:	The Seventh Seal: Criterion (1957)
Studio Line:	The Criterion Collection/Home Vision After a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight challenges Death to a fateful game of chess. The Seventh Seal launched the international career of its director, Ingmar Bergman, and made a star of its 27-year-old leading actor, Max Von Sydow. Forty years later, Bergman's stunning allegory of man's apocalyptic search for meaning remains a textbook on the art of filmmaking and an essential building block in any collection.
Director:	Ingmar Bergman
Cast:	Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Inga Gill.
DVD:	Standard 1.33:1; audio Swedish Digital Mono, English-dubbed Digital Mono; subtitles English; single sided - dual layered; 15 chapters; rated NR; 96 min.; $39.95; street date 2/2/99.
Supplements:	Audio Commentary by noted film historian Peter Cowie; An Annotated, Illustrated Bergman Filmography, featuring excerpts from Wild Strawberries and The Magician with commentary; Theatrical Trailer.
Purchase:	DVD

Picture/Sound/Extras: C+/B-(Swedish), D-(English)/C+ If you've read many of my reviews, you've probably figured out that I'm not much of one for artier, more "substantive" films. Too many movies of this sort tend to try so hard to be deep and meaningful that they simply come across as pretentious and silly. My opinions in that realm didn't bode well for my first encounter with Ingmar Bergman through the Criterion DVD of The Seventh Seal. After all, Bergman's pretty much the person around whom all the "art house" movie stereotypes revolve; his style has been (affectionately?) lampooned repeatedly and his name is synonymous with "dark and foreboding movies." I was willing to give the movie a shot, but I didn't expect much. Much to my surprise, however, I found The Seventh Seal to be a rather entertaining and enjoyable film. I'd prefer not to spend much time in this review discussing the implications and meanings of the various parts of the film. While The Seventh Seal clearly is a movie that opens itself up for a tremendous amount of introspection, enough has been written on that subject in regard to it that I don't feel terribly compelled to add many opinions of my own. Suffice it to say that The Seventh Seal essentially attempts to find and/or define the meaning of life. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't think the movie really seemed all that "deep." In the end, Bergman basically implies that "love is all you need" and that the simple unity of a man, a woman and a child offer the greatest hope and joy in life. Plus, Death's kind of a jerk. Anyway, while The Seventh Seal certainly offers itself up for all the dissection you might like, it also functions quite well as a basic piece of entertainment. Oh, it's all very ponderous stuff - the plague, the Crusades, women being burned at the stake, people flogging themselves, vain actors eating chicken - but Bergman does an excellent job of keeping the movie from becoming too somber. At various times, comic relief is inserted into the story, but he does not do so in terribly obvious ways. You want to see poorly integrated comic relief? Watch Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame. For the record, I'm a big Disney fan and I really liked Hunchback, mainly because it seemed so much more harsh and dark than the average Disney offering. Unfortunately, the filmmakers weren't willing to go all the way in that regard, and we periodically received moments of disruptive gaiety. For example, as the film nears its climax, quite a few sinister and dramatic occurrences take place. Nonetheless, the filmmakers felt the need to liven things up with a comic musical number from the living gargoyles! It felt dreadfully out of place and really disrupted the flow of the movie. That doesn't happen here, though it easily could have. Somehow Bergman manages to have his cake and eat it too. The Seventh Seal moves seamlessly between light comedy, such as the Cyrano-esque battle of wits between a blacksmith and an actor (the blacksmith needed help from a squire to hold his own), and dramatic scenes such as the aforementioned floggings, et al. As in the case of Hunchback, I normally don't care for comic relief. Too few movies have the guts to go all out and totally submerge the audience in a dark world that I greatly enjoy it when it happens; I don't feel any need to have the tension lightened because I like the tension. I enjoyed the lighter moments of The Seventh Seal not because I felt any need to "take a breather" but instead because they simply made the movie more interesting. While its heavy on issues, The Seventh Seal is light on plot; the only real story involves the knight's search for the meaning of life. I guess that's enough, but the tale unfolds largely as a series of random encounters. The humorous moments make the journey more interesting and they add zest to the characters so that the whole bunch doesn't seem just like a morose bunch of sots. Lesson learned: Bergman movies can be introspective and entertaining all at the same time. Second surprising lesson learned: if The Seventh Seal can be taken as historically accurate, I kind of wish I'd been alive and in Sweden during the Middle Ages. Yeah, I would have had to contend with the plague and the Crusades and all sorts of various persecution and problems, but the women were babes! Virtually every woman in The Seventh Seal who's under the age of 50 is quite the looker! And I'll bet even the older ones were hot in their time! Geez, hanging out in those medieval Swedish villages must have been just like lounging at the Playboy mansion! The DVD: Anyway, while I can't say that The Seventh Seal will ever be at the top of my "favorite movies" list, I nonetheless found it to be compelling and interesting. Criterion have done a pretty nice job in bringing it to DVD. In regard to the picture, Criterion apparently exerted a great deal of effort to clean and restore the film. They even present a reel that shows the contrast between the degraded original elements and the newly spruced up reels. All in all, I agree that they've done a nice job. In general, The Seventh Seal looks pretty sharp and relatively clean; to be sure, it appears much better than I would have expected. Its main faults stem from a fair number of speckles and spots that remain; these problems aren't bad and clearly don't interfere with viewing nearly to the degree that they did in the original materials, but nonetheless they remain. I spent much of the film debating between giving The Seventh Seal a "B-" or a "C+" rating. Why did I go with the lower grade? Because near the end of the film, we encounter a giant hair in the upper right corner of the screen! To be frank, that hair was the worst flaw I saw during the whole movie, and it sealed the picture's fate: "C+" it had to be! Still, it's a strong "C+" when you consider the age and originally poor condition of the film. As you may have already noticed, I issued two different sound ratings for The Seventh Seal. This is because it offers two different audio tracks: one from the original Swedish mix and another from the English dub. One might assume that the two tracks would sound essentially the same, but one would assume very incorrectly. Though it's plain old 40+ year old mono, the Swedish mix sounds quite good. Its quite clean and relatively rich, considering the age. Dialogue, music and effects all come across as fairly natural and crisp. The English mix, however, is a disaster. Its exceedingly harsh and flat, with tremendous amounts of background pops and clicks and general noise. Overall, the English dialogue is usually comprehendible, but it can be tough at times. The English mix would be a disappointment under any circumstances, but the great contrast between it and the very nice Swedish track further exacerbates its poor quality. Despite that, I actually found the English dub to be the preferable method to watch The Seventh Seal. For one, I find subtitles to be exceedingly distracting. Snobby types like to mock people who don't like films with subtitles as though this means we're somehow illiterate and unintelligent. While I don't doubt that some folks DO have a knee-jerk reaction against subtitles, in my case, I know that it has nothing to do with an opposition to reading. I simply don't like to read while I watch a movie. Film is much too visual a medium for subtitles to be tolerated. Sure, it's fine every once in a while to have something translated via subtitles - like having various alien languages in Star Wars or Star Trek interpreted - but The Seventh Seal requires every word to be read. That means that the viewer will unquestionably lose a lot of the experience. Bergman worked very hard to compose the film a certain way, and by forcing the viewer to concentrate on the bottom of the screen, much of the movie's impact will be lost. I also think that the subtitles of The Seventh Seal lost a lot in their translations. Since the only word of Swedish I know is "meatballs," I have no clue if the subtitles or the English dub remain closer to the original dialogue. However, I'd be willing to bet that the dub translates the speech much more accurately. Although the DVD's case indicates that they're "improved," the subtitles seemed exceedingly basic; they appeared to offer the gist of the dialogue but without anything extra. The dub, however, seemed to provide more varied and more complete wordplay and I think they probably came closer to delivering Bergman's messages. While I hated the sound of the English mix, I believe it's much more satisfactory than watching the rather perfunctory subtitles. Since the DVD of The Seventh Seal comes from Criterion, the company that pretty much invented the special edition, one would assume that it contains some nice supplements. One would be sort of correct. This DVD is essentially a port of an old laserdisc release. It's not completely clear when that version originally came out, but it appears to be from around 1987 or 1988. Although Criterion indicate that they performed additional clean-up work on the film prior to its DVD release, they do not seem to have done anything else different from the original. The main feature here is an audio commentary from film and Bergman historian Peter Cowie. This was the first time I'd ever heard a commentary from someone who wasn't actually involved with the creation of the film, and it was a fairly interesting listen. Cowie offers a nice balance of interpretation and historical background (for both the making of the movie and for the period of time it relates). Admittedly, I'd prefer a track from Bergman himself, but Cowie's commentary definitely offers some strong information about the film. (Sad admission time: I assumed the reason they had to use Cowie for the commentary was because Bergman was dead at the time of recording. Shows what I know! Not only was he still around in the late 1980s, the old dude's still kicking and producing films! What a surprise! Well, that eliminates that excuse for his lack of participation in the DVD!) Other than the commentary, the DVD offers little in the way of extras. We also get a pretty interesting film/biography of Bergman; this includes a wide variety of photos plus two film clips. The latter pieces, from Wild Strawberries and The Magician, also feature commentary from Cowie. This supplement provides a perfunctory recap of Bergman's life and his films, but it's not terribly insightful or special. Still, it's worth a look. Other than that, the only remaining supplements are some nice liner notes from Cowie and the original Swedish trailer. Think film ads that reveal far too much of the story are a recent problem? Think again! This trailer essentially gives away the whole point of the movie! It's an odd little piece of work. And that's it. Sorry, Criterion, but I don't consider the "restoration demonstration" or "color bars" to be extras, so that's where the bonuses end. While the extras are decent, I don't think they make up for the high cost of this DVD. Criterion like their $40 price point, even though it makes no sense for a relatively no frills offering such as The Seventh Seal to cost the same as their supplement-rich editions of Silence of the Lambs or This Is Spinal Tap. As such, I'm having a hard time recommending this DVD. If you can find it for much less money - say, $20 or less - then go for it. The Seventh Seal is a good movie that I'm sure will offer up even more depth upon repeated viewings, and Criterion have done a pretty good job of delivering it to DVD. However, the package simply lacks the extras that would make it worth $40. If you have to have it, there's nothing wrong with it that should hold you back. If not, hold off and hope for a cheaper issue. Menu: DVD Movie Guide | Archive | Top