Det Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal)

Ingmar Bergman's medieval morality play about man in search of the meaning of life is set in 14th-century Sweden. A knight, tormented and doubting, returns from 10 wasted years in the Crusades and Death comes to claim him. Hoping to gain some revelation or obtain some knowledge before he dies, the knight challenges Death to a game of chess. As they play, the knight observes scenes of cruelty, rot, and suffering that suggest the tortures and iniquity Ivan Karamazov described to Alyosha. In the end, the knight tricks Death in order to save a family. The knight, a sane modern man, asking to believe despite all the evidence of his senses, is childlike compared with his carnal atheist squire. (Pauline Kael)