Sony G90 - Manual (Page 102)

feelings breaks through the allegory with moving power. The
great set piece on the hillside, where the knight and the squire
share “communion” – here a bowl of milk and a plate of straw-
berries – with Jof and Mia has a beauty of spirit and gor-
geousness of language that are as deeply moving as Bergman
intends the scene to be. In spite of a few false notes (the
Plog/Lisa/Skat subplot, the knight’s “confession” to Death), a
good many of the tableaux are equally touching or horrifying.
And Jof’s final vision, and the biblical language that accompa-
nies it, is unforgettable.
And then there is the salvation scene, which has its own
special resonance. In choosing to spare Jof and Mia – and
what suspense there is in the film involves their salvation –
Bergman is saying two things, one overt and “public,” one, I
think, covert and personal. The overt and public meaning is
dictated by the allegory: Innocence is magically saved. But
what Bergman is not quite openly saying – or saying in a way
cloaked by this other meaning – is that, for him, the answer to
the riddle of death, to the quandary of faith, to the isolation of
pure reason is also bound up with the childlike imagination of
the artist and the bond of love. These are the meaningful
things worth saving, even if they can’t ultimately save the
artist’s life. The sentiment is so personal – and perhaps more
dear for that – that it is presented half-disguised by the “Inno-
cence” metaphor that the allegory requires. But it is there
amidst the obvious symbolism, like a secret wish.
There is another artist in The Seventh Seal, the church
painter (Gunnar Olsson) whom the squire encounters paint-
ing the very terrors that Bergman used to ponder in his youth.
By means of the painter, Bergman says:
I present my own artistic conviction. [The
painter] insists he is in show business. To sur-
vive in this business, it’s important to avoid
making people too mad.
3
To believe Bergman’s witticism just a little bit is to see
how he went about wrestling with his tangle of personal con-
flicts and violent historical realities by representing them
through signs and symbols, and, finally, to see him put his
faith not in the “important and impressive” ideas of God or
Reason but in the play of art and the acceptance of love. No
matter that these solutions would soon seem jejune to the
Bergman of Winter Light and other films. At the time he pas-
sionately cultivated his themes to their fullest, and The Sev -
enth Seal
remains, in Bergman’s words, “one of the few [of my
own films] really close to my heart.” 4
C r i t e r i o n ’s new digital transfer of The Seventh Seal i s
superb, far superior to their earlier excellent laser transfer
or to any other print or transfer of this film I have seen. (Cri-
terion actually gives you side-by-side examples of the laser
transfer and the new digital one in a special feature includ-
ed on the disc. You’ll be astonished at the improvements in
c l a r i t y, contrast, and noise on the DVD.) All in all, a disc well
worth owning.
3 Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life In Film (Arcade, 1994), p. 238. [Here-
after, Bergman.]
4 Bergman, p. 235.
www.theabsolutesound.com
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