Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Photographed by Gunnar Fischer
Edited by Lennart Wallen
Music by Sixten Ehrling.
Set design by P. A. Lundgren.
Released in 1956.

Cast

Antonius Block: Max von Sydow
Jons: Gunnar Bjoernstrand
Jof: Nils Poppe
Mia: Bibi Andersson
Death: Bengt Ekerot
Girl: Gunnel Lindblom
 

Story
    The story takes place in Sweden during the XIV century. Antonius Block, a Swedish Crusader, comes back from the Holy Land and, accompanied by his squire Jons, is traveling back to his castle, where his wife is waiting for him. The movie  opens with an ominous shot of darks skies and the sound of the Dies Irae, while an eagle (the eagle of Revelation 8, 13), flying against the sky, screeches.  The voice-over reads from Revelation, 8.
    It is dawn; Block wakes up after a night spent on a desolate and stony beach, and he is confronted with Death, who tells him his time has come. Block is unprepared, and manages to tempt Death into a game of chess which continues as Block and Jons travel through a country ravaged by plague, human stupidity, and religious madness.
    A company of traveling actors (Jof, his wife Mia, their son Michael, and Skat, a fellow actor) are asleep in their wagon.  Jof wakes up, goes outside and has a brief vision of the Virgin Mary teaching young Jesus to walk.  Astonished, he tells his wife who, however, does not believe him, in part because in the past he pretended to have visions.
    Block and Jons arrive at a church, and while Block stands in front of a crucifix, he sees what he takes to be a priest behind a grate.  In a great scene, he confesses to the priest that he feels horror at the emptiness of his life and that this feeling has cut him off from other people.  He wants to believe in God but cannot because he has no sure proof of God's existence; he invokes God, but  God is silent.  He is, one might say, unable to make a leap of faith.  He is convinced that if God doesn't exist, life is but a senseless terror and God nothing but an idol forged out of our fears and our dread of death.  If God is just an idol, he is a symbol of our weakness.  Block confesses that his life, like everybody's else, has been only a meaningless search, and that he is playing chess with Death in order to gain time to perform one significant action.  Queried by the confessor, he reveals his chess plan.  Only then, does he find out that the confessor is nobody but Death itself.  Still, he feels he's alive and engaged: he's playing chess with Death.  In the meantime, Jons is talking to the painter in charge of painting the walls of the church with frightening scenes of the black death.  He shudders as the painter morbidly explains the great suffering involved in dying from the plague.  However, he quickly recovers, and cynically notices that the crusade was a stupid enterprise which, he remarks laughing, only an idealist could have concocted for God's glory. As he shows the painter a small image of himself he painted as he was talking, Jons describes himself as one who grins at death, chuckles at the Lord, laughs at himself, smiles at the girls, and lives in a meaningless and absurd world.  As he finishes talking, Block takes the painting from his hands, as he sneers at his master. As they exit the church, the see the preparations for the burning of a young witch who, the guards say, has had intercourse with the Devil and who is taken to be the cause of the plague.
    Block and Jons arrive at a deserted village.  In a house, Jons surprises a thief robbing jewelry from the dead and recognizes him as Raval, the seminarist who ten years earlier had convinced his master to go to the Crusade.  After threatening to brand his face, Jons makes advances to a girl whom probably Ravel intended to rape, and asks her to be his cook.  She agrees.
    The traveling actors are giving a performance in a village, and Skat absconds with Lisa, the village smith's wife, to have sex behind a bush.  In the meantime, the performance is stopped by the arrival of flagellants singing the Dies Irae.  After a preacher scares the villagers with views of impending death, the flagellants leave.  Jons mocks both them and the Christian myths about the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  As he speaks, Plog, the village smith, recognizes him and asks him whether he has seen his wife.
    In an inn where many are convinced that the end of the world is at hand, Raval denounces Jof as an actor, in fact as the actor whose friend Skat is having an affair with the smith's wife.  Raval compels a very scared Jof to mount on a table and dance like a bear as the other guests chant rytmically.  As Jons appears, Jof somehow manages to run out with the bracelet Raval had taken from a dead woman; Jons, seeing what has happened, brands Raval on the face with a knife.
    Near the actor's carriage, as Block studies his chess strategy, he sees Mia with Michael and talks to her.  Jof, still terrorized from his misadventures, arrives, presents Mia with the stolen bracelet, and is lovingly consoled by her.  As Jof plays with Michael, Mia introduces Block to her husband, who invites the knight to share what they have, fresh milk and wild strawberries.  Block invites the actors to go with him through the forest to his castle.  Jons arrives, and Jof, recognizing him as his savior, shares food with him and his cook.  Prompted by the apparent of love between Mia and Jof, Block recounts how he and his wife used to love each other, play, sing and hunt together.  Suddenly, he remarks how believing involves suffering because it is like talking to a lover who never answers.  However, all these considerations seem unreal now, as he sits there with Mia and her family. In a great speech, he thanks them and claims that the memory of this evening, spent sharing milk and strawberries, will always be with him. Block leaves the company and finds Death awaiting him in order to continue the chess match.  Death remarks how Block seems pleased, and ominously inquires whether the traveling actors will cross the forest with him.
    Back at the inn, Jons finds Plog, the smith, crying over his wife who has abandoned him for Skat, and humorously consoles him.  Plog decides to go with Jons, and the group, now including Mia's family as well, enters the forest.  Plog sees Lisa, his wife, with Skat and chases the actor in order to kill him.  Soon, the confrontation between Plog and Skat degenerates in a war of words, with Jons providing an ironic commentary, and ends with the actor staging a fake suicide, while Lisa goes back to her husband.  Skat, goes away and, fearing bears and wolves, climbs on a tree to spend the night there.  He makes plans for the future, but Death, unmoved by his pleas, cuts the tree and Skat dies.  A squirrel is seen climbing the top of the stump.
    Block's group is joined by soldiers carrying the witch to her death .  He questions her to find whether she can introduce him to the Devil, who certainly must know whether God exists.  She claims that the Devil is always with her (after all, the priests said so), but Block realizes that she is just a poor crazy girl .  As Death appears near her, it asks Block whether he shall ever stop asking questions, and Block answers negatively.  While Jons remarks that it would be useless to kill the soldiers in order to free the girl because the wretched creature is already half dead, Block gives her a potion that will prevent her from feeling pain.  Jons tells an anguished Block that the witch's terror filled eyes show that she is now realizing that neither angels, nor God, nor the Devil, will take care of her: only emptiness, nothingness, awaits the poor girl.  Unable to stand the sight, Jons goes away.  Later, as dawn approaches, Block's group sees a terrified Raval die of the plague.  Death has now come to finish the game with Block.  By a trick Block manages to allow Mia, Michael, and Jof (who alone can see who is playing with the knight) to go away unnoticed while a great storm gathers.  Block loses the match, and his inquiries about God are met with Death's claims of ignorance on the subject.  The knight and his company arrive at his castle, where they are greeted by his wife.  After a few moments of tenderness between husband and wife, they eat, and as the wife reads from Revelation, 8, knocks are heard at the door.  It's Death who has come to take them away.  Block prays to God, while Jons, as usual, sneers and opposes his vitality to Block's anguish.  As they are lead in a line by Death up a hill, they are seen by Jof, whose vision, however, is disbelieved by Mia.  As the sun shines again, Mia, Jof, and Michael leave with their cart.
 

Analysis

    Philosophically, the movie is very dense, and many of characters are allegorical in that they embody typical philosophical and pre-philosophical positions and ways of life.
    Block's worries and quest are evidenced throughout the movie, but are made especially clear in the great scene in which he confesses, unaware, to Death. He's anguished by the fear that life and suffering have no meaning and by doubts about God's existence.  He would like to have faith, but he is, at best, wavering.  His existential problems are amplified by his belief that if God doesn't exists, then life and suffering are meaningless. Worse, if God is just an idol, then it is constructed out of our weakness and fears. Note that although the action takes place in the XIV century, Block's character is modern: he is not concerned about salvation and his own sins, as a medieval knight would be, but about the meaning of life, a typically modern issue. In addition, he strikes an existentialist note by claiming that he intends to perform a significant action before his death, as if the meaning of his life were to be found in his action, and not in the fact that it is created by God.
    Jons is a skeptical atheist who thinks that life is ultimately meaningless and "ridiculous to all including himself," as he tells the painter in the church in which Block confesses to Death. He still fears dying (he shudders as he talks to the painter), but there's little evidence that he fears death.  For an atheist, perhaps death is an evil, but if so, it is a minor one, and therefore needn't be feared.  Rather, he seems partially to overcome his existential anguish by irony and self mockery. Bergman has claimed to have greater sympathy for the Jonses than for the Blocks of the world, and certainly Jons seems to be the most positive character in the movie.  He's the sort of man you would want to have around in case of need since, for all his failures, he embodies ethical strength, and is not paralyzed by anguish as Block is. Note that Jons does not succumb to lust and gluttony, as the typical medieval atheist character would, and at the end faces death with great courage.
    Death, of course, is death. But it also stands as the symbol of nothingness and, perhaps, meaninglessness. Note that Block fights it in his attempt at making sense of his life.  Death ultimately does not know anything about God; it is, one might say, a character of our world, not of the next one.  At best, it may provide us with the clarity of mind needed to ask deep metaphysical questions, but it cannot give us any answers.
    Skat is always intent in seducing women, and seems to have no existential concerns.  When death reaches him, his attempts at getting a reprieve look pathetically funny.  Upon his death due to the felling of the tree on which he had sought refuge, a squirrel, a symbol of the soul in Nordic myth, climbs  on the stump.  This intimates that Skat represents a pagan world view essentially unconcerned with problems of the meaning of life and interested in the pursuit of pleasure.  Bergman's depiction of a life of pleasure is rather unfair in that pleasure needn't be restricted to so called 'lower pleasures.'  Still, Skat's charcater is certainly better than that of Raval, the slimy ex-seminarist.
    The flagellants, the priests, and their victims represent the Church, a sado-masochistic institution embodying a particularly terrifying version of Christianity. In its view, the plague has been sent by God to punish our sins (its successors hold that AIDS has been sent to punish homosexuality and sexual promiscuity). Ergo, the need for flagellants to expiate for their (and ours!) sins; the burning of the witch who has had intercourse with the Devil; the fire and brimstone preaching in word and painting. The Church is a terrifying symbol of a religion preaching fear, not love; punishment, not forgiveness; death, not life.
    Jof (Joseph), Mia (Mary), and Mikael are harder to make out. Often in the movie they appear, literally and metaphorically, with particular luminosity. Perhaps they represent the Holy Family and the promise of a better world (Michael will do miraculous things, and Jof has powers of mystical vision, since he sees the Virgin Mary and Death). Or, more likely, they represent the basic human goodness of some of those who are not concerned with big issues but deeply love each other and are kind to others. They seem to possess simple but deep and sincere faith.
    Does Block find faith at the end?  Does he manage to find a meaning in life?  Or, which is the same, does the movie provide a clear resolution to the dialectical duel between Block and Jons?  The answer is, of course, unclear.  Obviously, God does not unequivocally reveal himself to Block, and consequently the certainty he looks for keeps eluding him.  Perhaps, the meaning of life lies in human interaction.  At dusk, while the rays of the dying sun lighten his face and he is drinking milk and eating wild straberries with Mia's family and others, Block experiences a sort of epiphany, beautifully expressed in a great speech. For a moment, he does seem to find the meaning of life in human relations.  If existential anguish cuts him off from other people, as he confesses to Death, the feeling of human community he experiences and expresses so well marks the end of his sense of meaninglessness and void.  The point can be reinforced by noticng that he does deceive Death in order to save the actors' family. Perhaps, then, this deed is what gives meaning to his life.  However, there's no recall of this episode at the end of the movie. Then, Block seems as anguished as ever: he wants God, and prays to Him; but God, as always, is silent.  Jons seems to be better off.  He has no illusions about God, us, and our lives, and is convinced that nothing we can do ultimately gives meaning to our existence.  Being alive, struggling and sneering at life seems all we can do.  Perhaps so, but this seems a desperate gospel.