I had another look at Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) the other day: It has been some forty years since I last saw it! The film is not of course about chess, the game being only a prop (pointing to the movie's theatrical underpinning).

Bob Basalla has a lengthy entry on the film in his Chess In The Movies but says nothing about the game's many piece-misplacements or other anomalies. Bill Wall notices "One small detail: the board is set up wrong, with the dark square to the right instead of the light square to the right." (We'll see.) There are also some chess-related observations on IMDb's goofs page.

To begin, I will backdrop my discussion with 64 frames from the movie, chronologically arranged but necessarily scattered — some scenes in great detail, others only a representative sampling.

First, there is the opening gambit on the beach (pictures 1-7): The light-square-to-the-right appears correct for these boards. Death's deceit (8, 9) are the only two frames not showing at least part of one chess piece. Block spies mother and child (10, also pictured above) again has the correct light-square-to-the-right.

The middle game sections naturally into three parts: before (11-16), the moves (17-24), and after (25-28). Inverting the colours of the board-squares, the entire sequence can be summarized by this illustration. In addition to those changes incurred by the moves, we have the pawn at e7 transposed to c7; queen at e8, to d8; and knight at c8, to b8. Furthermore, I believe that the before position comes precariously close to being impossible in modern chess: The two white bishops are on the same-coloured squares and the black pawn at e5 could only have gotten there by means involving two captures (necessarily a bishop and a pawn). I'll also mention that the hand on the chin in 27 appears to be gone in the cut-to 28.

The remainder of the frames deal with the end-game: Block studies the position (29-31); the game resumes (32-34); Death takes Block's queen (35-37); Block reacts (38); Death plays Rh8-h7 (39-41); Block ponders (42); Death appraises (43); Block is clumsy (44-50); Death reappraises (51); Block doesn't remember the position (52-54); Death does remember the position (55-59); Block is resigned (60-62); Death plays Qa1 checkmate (63, 64). The board orientation is light-square-to-the-right for all except the final two (checkmate) positions. Even ignoring the checkmate, there are numerous continuity/placement-disparity issues: The a-file placement (looking at Block) of 30-34 reappears in 38, 42, 44-50, 52-54, 60-62. When the camera looks at Death however (35-37), I see only one black and one white piece in the a-file, then only the black piece (43, 51, 55-59), A third camera angle (39-41) shows yet another a-file placement. Note also that the pieces Block has in his hands in 58 and 59 are gone in the cut-to 60.

In the entire end-game sequence, we see Death making three moves, yet the only move Block makes is to knock over the pieces, In fact, it was Block's move prior to knocking over the pieces: After Death has set them up again, he delivers the checkmate, as if knocking over the pieces was Block's move! I would like to think that this was intentional — planting deeper meaning into the story — but, more than likely, it's another example of poorly-executed (constrained, to be charitable) action and/or editing.

Addendum (29 September 2009): A chess set belonging to Ingmar Bergman (missing a white king and "believed to have been used in The Seventh Seal") was sold yesterday at an auction. Charlotte Bergstrom, a spokeswoman at Bukowskis in Stockholm, is quoted as saying: "In one part of the film, Max von Sydow sweeps his mantle over the table and the pieces fall to the ground and you can see that the white king breaks into pieces." Well, you cannot see the king break or that it is broken after the sweep. However, I will acknowledge that the top corner of one side of the king is in fact missing in frames 58 and 59. Perversely, the king is unbroken in the subsequent checkmate scene.