In fourteenth-century Sweden, a knight returns from the Crusades to find Europe ravaged by the black death. Journeying through a land stricken by destruction, the knight is visited by Death himself. He challenges the grim figure to a game of chess, hoping to bargain for the ultimate prize: his life.

The grotesque waltz of the danse macabre encircles Ingmar Bergman’s darkly picaresque journey through the occulted medieval psyche. A potent marriage of contemporary existentialism and premodern magical thought, this deservedly iconic film contains some of cinema’s most indelibly symbolic images.