Sony G90 manual Issues 111

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

3

making people too mad.

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

4

own films] really close to my heart.”

Criterion’s new digital transfer of The Seventh Seal is

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

clarity, 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.

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