When actor Max von Sydow died at age 90 earlier this year, it was not the first time he had faced death. In the famous film role that launched a career of them — The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Exorcist, Hannah and Her Sisters, Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and many more — the legendary Swedish performer portrayed a medieval knight who plays a chess match with a personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot), in a bid to extend his own life at its appointed end.
The profile image of an eerie, black-clad figure and a young knight sitting at a chessboard has become an iconic shorthand for The Seventh Seal, the 1957 film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. A classic of world cinema, the film has been referenced and parodied in pop culture, inspiring notable pastiches in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (in which Death instead plays modern games, such as Twister and Battleship), two Monty Python films, and elsewhere.
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