A Knight and his squire are home from the crusades. Black Death is sweeping their country. As they approach home, Death appears to the knight and tells him it is his time. The knight challenges Death to a chess game for his life. The Knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.
This is my first Ingmar Bergman experience and I was definitely in over my head. While I'm not familiar at all with any of Bergman's work, this seemed to interest me extremely. A knight returning from the Crusades who is followed by Death, and then challenges him to a game of chess to win his life back. However again, a lot of it was over my head as I wasn't overly impressed (still impressed somewhat though). Max von Sydow was great as the knight crusader, Antonius Block; however, Bengt Ekerot as Death easily stole the show and was quite terrifying on screen with his face being the only visible part of his body shown.
