DVD Pick: The Seventh Seal (Criterion Collection 2009)

Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) was arguably the seminal film in what became a wave of subtitled foreign movies that large numbers of Americans went to see in specialty theaters known as art houses. Later, Bergman's masterpiece was seen at home by many more on television, videotape, laserdisc and the 1999 Criterion Collection single-disc DVD. On June 16, 2009, Criterion released a new two-disc DVD version of The Seventh Seal that is superior to the 1999 edition in every way. The picture is better and the English subtitles are improved (for example, the characters called Joseph and Mary in the old subtitles are now called Jof and Mia). Furthermore, the 2009 edition adds 2 hours 19 minutes of video bonus materials and a 20-minute audio supplement, plus the old scholarly audio commentary accompanying the feature film is carried over. Also on June 16, 2009, The Seventh Seal was released for the first time on Blu-ray with the same extras as the new two-disc DVD set.

The movie The Seventh Seal is a great classic of world cinema that has been covered in depth on this site previously, and the discussion here will focus on the 2009 edition's bonus materials.

For those who have seen at least four or five Bergman movies, the best extra is the 83-minute Swedish-language "Bergman Island," a fascinating documentary made by television journalist Marie Nyreröd. As its title suggests, the documentary has some wonderful footage of Fårö, the small, bucolic Baltic island where Bergman shot a few movies and lived the last years of his life until his death in 2007. But Nyreröd, who shot most of the footage in 2004 when Bergman was 86, managed to get the enigmatic and elusive filmmaker to comment on some personal matters, including: his childhood in Stockholm, where his father was a Lutheran minister; his self-imposed exile from his native country when Swedish authorities charged him with tax evasion; his love affairs with actresses Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann; his five marriages and nine children; and his hopes that he would somehow be reunited with his deceased fifth wife, to whom he was married for 24 years.

Peter Cowie is a film historian who has authored many books on cinema, including Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography, and he has taught at University of California, Santa Barbara. Cowie makes three scholarly contributions to the 2009 Criterion Collection release of The Seventh Seal. The best of these is the 35-minute "Bergman 101," which covers the filmmaker's body of work from 1944 to 2003 using stills, behind-the-scenes photos and clips from movies and TV productions. Cowie also provides the feature film's worthwhile audio commentary track, which was recorded way back in the laserdisc days of 1987 and was also on the 1999 DVD release. Finally, in 2008 Cowie made the 10-minute video featurette titled "Afterword," in which he updates his thinking on The Seventh Seal.

Watch the three-minute intro Bergman made for Swedish TV to see Albertus Pictor's medieval wall painting of Death playing chess with a well-dressed man. Another fun extra is "Woody Allen on Bergman," a seven-minute 1998 piece for Turner Classic Movies in which the American filmmaker discusses four Bergman works and declares the Swede "the greatest film artist since the invention of the motion picture camera." There's also an interesting 20-minute audio interview of Max von Sydow, who plays the knight in The Seventh Seal, but is well known to mainstream audience for his appearances in movies like The Exorcist. Finally, the 2009 Criterion Collection release comes packaged with a 24-page illustrated booklet containing an insightful essay on The Seventh Seal by critic Gary Giddins.

Below I have listed all the details for the Criterion Collection two-disc DVD set containing The Seventh Seal.

Release Date: June 16, 2009
Number of Discs: 2
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, Black and White
Swedish Monaural
English-Dubbed Soundtrack
English Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Film Scholar Peter Cowie
Ingmar Bergman Intro (3 min.)
Peter Cowie Afterword (10 1/2 min.)
Max von Sydow Audio Interview (20 min.)
Woody Allen on Bergman (7 min.)
Bergman Island (1 hr. 23 min.)
Bergman 101 (35 min.)
Theatrical Trailer
24-Page Booklet Containing Essay by Gary Giddins