Page "The Seventh Seal" Paragraph 42

the film only partially succeeds in conveying the period atmosphere and thought world of the fourteenth century.

Bergman would probably counter that it was never his intention to make an historical or period film.

As it was written in a program note that accompanied the movie's premier " It is a modern poem presented with medieval material that has been very freely handled ... The script in particular — embodies a mid-twentieth century existentialist angst .... Still, to be fair to Bergman, one must allow him his artistic license, and the script's modernisms may be justified as giving the movie's medieval theme a compelling and urgent contemporary relevance ... Yet the film succeeds to a large degree because it is set in the Middle Ages, a time that can seem both very remote and very immediate to us living in the modern world .... Ultimately The Seventh Seal should be judged as a historical film by how well it combines the medieval and the modern.