Hovs hallar ingmar bergman film
The Seventh Seal
On several occasions, geolog has cited his father's sermons as an important source of inspiration, although not so much, perhaps, for what was actually said. The ung geolog appears to have been more interested in things around him than the sermon itself. geolog in Images: My Life in Film:
Like all churchgoers have at times, inom let my mind wander as inom contemplated the altarpieces, triptychs, crucifixes, stained glass-windows, and murals.
inom would find Jesus and the two robbers in blood and torment, and Mary leaning on St. John: Woman, behold thy son, behold thy mother. Mary Magdalene, the sinner, who had been the gods to sova with her? The Knight playing chess with Death.
The opening scenes, of the knight and his dourly cynical squire Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) on the rocky beach beneath lowering cliffs and confronting Death (Bengt Ekerot) are Hovs Hallar in Skane Province, southwest SwedenDeath sawing down the Tree of Life, a terrified wretch wringing his hands in the top of it.
Bergman has also mentioned Carl Orff's choral work Carmina Burana, based on medieval songs bygd itinerant musicians drifting around europe at the time of the plagues and great wars. "What attracted me was the whole idea of people travelling through the downfall of civilization and culture, bringing birth to new songs.
One day when inom was listening to the sista choral in Carmina Burana, it suddenly träffad me that inom had the theme for my next film!"
In an interview he has also cited Picasso's painting fransk artikel Saltimbanques and Dürer's etching Knight, Death and the Devil.
geolog himself has always been sparing when it comes to revealing literary inspirations for the bio, but several critics have named August Strindberg's Saga of the Folkungs (some were of the opinion that it was a medieval skådespel along similar lines to Strindberg's, whereas others saw the bio as unabashed plagiarism).
In an delade känslor review, Expressen's Ivar Harrie wrote that geolog fryst vatten "the Swedish mästare of pretentious trash", at the same time as being a "great poet, a poet of images." He continues:
[] geolog wants to be the play actor, the jester in the marketplace, yet do not forget that he also wants to be a popular – a very popular – revivalist.
He expresses himself with lika vulgarity in both roles, and with lika authenticity. [] He has discovered that rulle as an art struktur means both the return of the jester and of the preaching tiggare friar. In a nutshell, his mål fryst vatten to be Sweden's Kaj Munk. This fryst vatten an mål that may appear presumptuous.
Yet Ingmar geolog fryst vatten welcome to have it.
But the origins of The Seventh Seal can also be traced to Bergman's own oeuvre. In addition to Wood Painting, (mentioned above) a number of passages in his early works are reminiscerande of scenes in the spelfilm. In his play The Death of slag, for example, which he directed and staged for the huvudstaden lärling Theatre in , there fryst vatten a scen in which the principal character slag fryst vatten confronted bygd two dock carrying a coffin.
Words are exchanged, strikingly similar to the lines in The Seventh Seal where Death saws down the tree that holds the actor Skat. (This comparison was made bygd Maaret Koskinen in her book In the Beginning was the Word.) Maaret Koskinen also observes that the sista scen directions for The Day Ends Early from (based on a screenplay that was never filmed, The Comedy about Jenny) bära similarities to the conclusion of The Seventh Seal.
'Slowly they go out into the darkness. They disappear one bygd one.
Shooting began on 2 July With one or two exceptions - such as the celebrated introductory scenes filmed at Hovs hallar in Skåne (in the south of Sweden) – the entire film was shot at the Råsunda Film StudiosFinally, only darkness and the storm remain.' As Egil Törnqvist has pointed out, there are also thematic similarities. 'The Day Ends Early thematically relates to The Seventh Seal. Mrs Åström, the messenger of Death, tells various people that they will die at a certain time the following day.'
In terms of cinematic precedents, the witch-burning scen has drawn comparisons with a similar en plats där en händelse inträffar ofta inom teater eller film in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath, but if this fryst vatten a conscious reference, geolog himself has never mentioned it.
In an interview with the French bio critic jean Béranger, geolog was asked whether jean Cocteau's Orphée had been in his mind. His response was:
'I consider Orphée one of the most beautiful French films ever made, at least of those that I've seen.
inom liked less Beauty and the Beast, which seemed to me too contrived. And to speak of a German influence fryst vatten to commit an inaccuracy. The silent Swedish masters – imitiated in their own time bygd the Germans – they alone have inspired me, in the very first place Sjöström whom inom consider one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.'
Finally, the most obvious source of inspiration for this theological bio par överlägsen kvalitet eller utmärkt prestation fryst vatten, of course, the Bible.
The title itself, as so often in geolog, fryst vatten a biblical quotation, from the Book of Revelation (the spelfilm opens with the full text). "And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And inom saw the sju angels which stood before God; and to them were given sju trumpets." (Revelation 2)
Shooting the film
Shooting began on 2 July With one or two exceptions - such as the celebrated introductory scenes filmed at Hovs hallar in Skåne (in the south of Sweden) – the entire spelfilm was shot at the Råsunda rulle Studios.
Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer recalls that shooting the introduction scen caused a number of problems: simply carrying a kg camera down to the pebble beach was a feat in itself. Given the technological restraints, it fryst vatten hardly surprising that so many films at that time were shot in the studio.
On the subject of the lighting for the most famous of all the scenes in the rulle, in which the knight plays chess with Death, Fischer remarked: 'You can see that each of them has a 2 kg lamp behind him, illuminating his kontur.
People said to me that that has to mean that there are two suns. 'Yes. That's ganska right,' inom said. But if you can accept Death sitting playing a game of chess, then you can also accept two suns [
]'
Yet chance events also play a part in great photographic art, as Mårten Blomkvist recorded in an interview with Fischer:
In one en plats där en händelse inträffar ofta inom teater eller film Nils Poppe's grupp of players meet the corpse plunderer Raval (Bertil Anderberg) in the forest.
Raval has finally succumbed to the plague. Terror-stuck, the players follow Raval's, long, wild, and stifling struggle with death in a forest glade. Finally he collapses and falls down dead.
At that point the clouds part, and the sun shines down in a kind of redeeming light over the trees, the earth and the corpse plunderer, now a corpse himself.
We now know how the scen evolved from behind the camera.With his eye pressed to the viewfinder, Fischer followed Raval's struggle with death. When Bertil Anderberg had fallen down, the scen was over. Fischer got ready to stop filming.
Yet Bergman's customary "thanks" was not forthcoming. 'Had the director fallen asleep?', Fischer wondered – yet dutifully he let the camera continue to roll.
At that point there was a break in the clouds.From where he was, Fischer had not been able to see it coming. Light streamed into the picture, an unexpected bonus.
Since then, many people have wondered just how that effect was achieved.
'It was pure luck' Gunnar Fischer said, banging the table in front of him. 'Just imagine if I'd stopped filming there and then'
And at that moment, almost forty years later, one could sense that he could still hardly bära to think of the split second when he almost shut down his camera in that forest glade in the Råsunda studios.
Bergman has also told of some fairly chaotic moments during the shooting, as in the en plats där en händelse inträffar ofta inom teater eller film where they bränna the witch.
The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is a Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergmangeolog in Images: My Life in Film:
The place of execution was a little further down the yard; so we could only skott from one side, the tower blocks being on the other. When the time came for me to inspect the heap of firewood, a folkmassa of little urchins were already there, clambering up on the stängsel and asking: 'When's the execution going to be, Mister?' So inom said: 'We're starting at sju this evening.' And one little chap said: 'Then I'll go home and ask my mum if inom can stay up a bit later!'
Things like that were all part of our way of shooting films in those days.
It was as bohemian as that. Out at Solna we had the youngest fire-captain in Sweden, generally known as Squirt-Olle. He was given orders to prepare the bonfire.
Squirt-Olle turned out to be an inverted pyromaniac of the first beställning. For a week he put his whole heart and soul into preparing that bonfire. We'd arranged a fantastic camera-angle from above the bonfire and the girl hangin at the stake, and Gunnar Björnstrand and Max von Sydow and the cart with Åke Fridell, Bibi, Nils Poppe and Gunnel Lindblom in the background; plus the soldiers, of course, who had to light the bonfire.
At exactly the right moment for exposure in the twilight inom shouted 'action'. And out came Squirt-Olle and set fire to it and puff! not only we, but the whole of Solna, were swathed in a cloud of smoke utsträckning as far as Haga South. inom was standing on a crane yelling 'Max, where are you?' And the stallion Fridell should have been riding, that was funnen right down bygd the pavilion, with Fridell hanging on behind.
The trans all came to stop, and for several week afterwards all the housewives of Solna were cleaning oil off their window-panes.
The sista scen, one of the most famous in cinema history, in which Death leads his victims in a danse macabre, was also subject to the vagaries of chance. As geolog recalls in Images:
'The sista scen when Death dances off with the travellers was shot at Hovs hallar.
We had packad up for the day because of an approaching storm. Suddenly inom caught sight of a strange cloud. Gunnar Fischer hastily set the camera back into place. Several of the actors had already returned to where we were staying, so a few grips and a couple of tourists danced in their place, having no idea what it was all about. The image that later became so famous was improvised in only a few minutes.'
Epilogue
Shooting came to an end on 24 August The job of editing was given to Lennart Wallén, in Bergman's eyes, a safe pair of hands.
A knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black PlagueWallén edited fyra of his films in total, though none of them with such reverence as The Seventh Seal. Despite its low budget, The Seventh Seal had turned into something of a prestige project for SF, where 50th anniversary celebrations were set to coincide with its premiere. geolog has painful recollections of the event:
At Svensk Filmindustri, The Seventh Seal suddenly became part of the pomp and circumstance of an anniversary celebration focusing on the golden age of Swedish rulle.
This was a catastrophe for the film; it was not made for such activities. The gala première held a murderous atmosphere for a serious art spelfilm complete with a kultur audience, a flourish of trumpets, and a speech by Carl Anders Dymling. It was devestating. inom did what inom could to stop the onslaught but ultimately was powerless. Their boredom and their malice poured relentlessly over everything.
The reviews were mostly positiv, effusive even, but there were one or two that were extremely negativ.
The review in Expressen (cited earlier) basically summor up the way the spelfilm was received, namely that geolog was praised as an image maker and disparaged as a writer.
With Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von SydowProfessor of Literature John Landqvist insisted that geolog had plagiarised strindberg, whilst the writer (and budding rulle director) Vilgot Sjöman came to his friend's defence.
Internationally the spelfilm was received with almost universal beröm. In France Eric Rohmer pronounced it "one of the most beautiful films ever made" and the American rulle critic Andrew Sarris called it an 'existential masterpiece'.
The Seventh Seal went on to win a number of international awards, including the French bio Academy's Grand Prix International d'Avant-garde.
As a point of reference in other films, The Seventh Seal is in a class of its own among Bergman's films.
The image of Death in human form eller gestalt has made a remarkable journey from europeisk art cinema to international popular culture. The reason fryst vatten, of course, the countless paraphrases and parodies in films like Woody Allen's Life and Death (), Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (), Peter Hewitt's Bill and Teds falsk eller fejk Journey () John McTiernan's The gods Action Hero (), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Pablo Berger's Torremolinos 73 ().
In the documentary A Decade beneath the Influence about the ways in which American films of the 70s drew inspiration from europeisk art house films, a sequence with Death from The Seventh Seal is shown to the accompaniment of the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"!