IMAGES
If any artist has made the fullest use of cinema as a visual art form it is Ingmar Bergman. His works often resemble works of art, and are almost always inspired from Renaissance paintings as well as contemporary works.
His most famous image is, of course, that of the Knight Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow) playing chess with Death in his film classic "The Seventh Seal."
However, there are many other images which stand out from "The Seventh Seal," just as there are many movements which stand out from any classic symphony. My personal favorite
is that of the "dance of death," at the film's closing sequence. It is an image of such religious/mythic power and the one single visual element that only an artist of Bergman's
stature could have pulled off. Even though death leads the the knight in a dance, it is clear that it is a dance of defeat for evil, for it is goodness (Josef, Mary & child)
which lives on.
