20 July 2021

The Seventh Seal (blu-ray)


Det Sjunde Inseglet Sjunde Inseglet

Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) was released on blu-ray and DVD in 2007 by Tartan in the UK, to mark the film’s fiftieth anniversary. Other blu-ray and DVD releases followed over the next decade, from Criterion in the US, Studio Canal in France, and Arthaus in Germany.

Unlike all previous releases on VHS and DVD, each of these blu-ray discs has an altered version of the film’s opening title sequence: the first word, “DET” (‘the’), is missing, and the rest of the title thus appears off-centre. This anomaly was corrected by Criterion for their Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema blu-ray collection, which featured a 2018 restoration of The Seventh Seal that reinstated the definite article into the title sequence. 4k UHD releases from Criterion and the BFI also feature the complete title (although unfortunately the blu-ray disc included with Criterion’s 4k release doesn’t).