Saturday, April 7

Emin Alper: “Bergman’s most aesthetically gothic film is The Seventh Seal”

10 directors from Turkey picked out their most favorite films by one of the veterans of the modern art of cinema, Bergman, for the section of “Bergman: 100 Years”. Emin Alper presented his choice of film, The Seventh Seal, as part of this programme:

“The Seventh Seal is the first Bergman film I’ve seen. It’s one of those films we watched over and over again and talked a lot about. That’s why it’s very important to me personally. First of all, it is a film where we can find many themes typical of Bergman. Typical existential questions, the existence and absence of god, or the question of how this knowledge would change our lives and different stances taken as a response to these questions.”

“We can say that this is Bergman’s most aesthetically-gothic film. Indeed, it goes way back to the ages when the gothic art was born and to the plague of middle ages. There are images very typical of gothic art, the knight playing chess with the death, self-flagellation, cults… In the film, we see all these images with an impressive tone. In fact, Bergman says that he made this film based on his memories of what he had seen in church as a child. So this film has a special place in me as someone who has a special interest in gothic literature and cinema. Some of you may have seen it: The last shot of Beyond the Hill, where the main characters are walking past the hilltop, was, in my own way, a reference to the final scene of The Seventh Seal. This is the reason why I picked this film.”

Photo: Benek Özmez