'' The Seventh Seal '' significantly helped Bergman in gaining his position as a world-class director . When the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival , the attention generated by it ( along with the previous year 's '' Smiles of a Summer Night '' ) made Bergman and his stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson well known to the European film community , and the critics and readers of '' Cahiers du Cinéma '' , among others , discovered him with this movie . Within five years of this , he had established himself as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema . With its images and reflections upon death and the meaning of life , '' The Seventh Seal '' had a symbolism that was " immediately apprehensible to people trained in literary culture who were just beginning to discover the ' art ' of film , and it quickly became a staple of high school and college literature courses ... Unlike Hollywood ' movies , ' '' The Seventh Seal '' clearly was aware of elite artistic culture and thus was readily appreciated by intellectual audiences . " The representation of Death as a white-faced man who wears a dark cape and plays chess with mortals has been a popular object of parody in other films and television
1957 Cannes Film Festival
1957 Cannes Film Festival
The Seventh Seal