The Seventh Seal - Parody

Parody

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.

Several films portray Death as playing games other than or in addition to chess. In the final scene of the 1968 film De Düva (mock Swedish for "The Dove"), a 15-minute pastiche of Bergman's work generally and his Wild Strawberries in particular, the protagonist plays badminton against Death and wins when the droppings of a passing dove strike Death in the eye. The photography imitates throughout the style of Bergman's cinematographers Sven Nykqvist and Gunnar Fischer. The protagonists of the 1991 science-fiction comedy Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey return to life by defeating Death (played by William Sadler) at Battleship, Clue, electric football and Twister. After each of the first three games, Death insists that the competition be extended to a "best-of-three," "-five," and then "-seven" series, but after being swept in four games he concedes defeat.

Woody Allen's one-act play entitled Death Knocks, part of his anthology Getting Even, depicts a man playing gin rummy against Death. Allen, an enormous fan of Ingmar Bergman, references Bergman's work in his serious dramas as well as his comedies; his Love and Death, a broad parody of 19th-century Russian novels, closes with a "Dance of Death" scene imitating Bergman's.

Read more about this topic:  The Seventh Seal

Famous quotes containing the word parody:

    Pushkin’s composition is first of all and above all a phenomenon of style, and it is from this flowered rim that I have surveyed its seep of Arcadian country, the serpentine gleam of its imported brooks, the miniature blizzards imprisoned in round crystal, and the many-hued levels of literary parody blending in the melting distance.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are good for parody only?
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)