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With: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot
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Written by: Ingmar Bergman
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Directed by: Ingmar Bergman
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MPAA Rating: Not Rated
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Language: Swedish with English subtitles
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Running Time: 96
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Date: 02/16/1957
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Pawn Men
By Jeffrey M. Anderson Bergman's most popular and most acclaimed film, yet it doesn't do much for me (I've seen it twice now). Max von Sydow plays a knight returning from the crusades who challenges Death to a chess game. Inbetween moves he witnesses scenes of beauty and death, and gets to know a traveling group of entertainers. It manages some powerful images, but it feels a bit too calculated to really get under the skin. It's really rather juvenile and relies on grandiose theatrical ideas rather than the more subtle cinematic ones Bergman used in later films. It also invented all the silly art house movie clichés that are still parodied to this day (and have not aged well). In 2009, The Criterion Collection released a super-deluxe two-disc DVD set.
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