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Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #335: The Seventh Seal

Unless you are a film student or a fan of all cinema, when you hear the name Ingmar Bergman odds are you think boring European films in black and white. Or maybe you have never heard the name at all. Yet his 1957 classic “The Seventh Seal” is not only filled with profound ideas about faith, religion and mortality but it also some rather funny scenes bordering on slapstick. Then of course there is that iconic scene at the beginning where knight Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow) is playing chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot) to delay his demise. Before watching the film I had seen that particular image parodied plenty of times in pop culture, most notably in an episode of Animaniacs, only Yako convinced Death to play checkers instead. Still, before watching it the first time at the University of Sherbrooke’s film club I didn’t really know what to expect. It was part of a double feature with “Persona,” another classic, which I found more difficult to follow. On th...