A wonderful Bergman classic which has withstood the test of time unscathed and its beautifully shot poetic and philosophical meditations on life, death and meaning still leave echoes in you mind more than sixty years after its making.

Next to the lapping sea, Antonius Block a knight returning from the crusades attempts to defy death by convincing him to play a game of chess. This film is a powerful allegorical discussion of meaning and the search for God set amidst the devastation wreaked by the plague and witches being burned at the stake.

Antonius Block (played by a young Max von Sydow) wanders through the film visually, narratively and linguistically, searching for an answer. Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand), his squire, adds a more down-to-earth, pragmatic and resigned philosophical voice. Jof (Nils Poppe), the touring actor, adds a touch of humanity and theatricalised mundanity to the dramatic and timeless quality of the film and his smiling sparkly eyes add a touch of hope, albeit tinged with a little melancholy. And death (Bengt Ekerot) is just there, walking alongside them.

The acting is superb throughout. The images are as sumptuous individually as they are as a whole. The vision is as fresh as ever. More than just one of cinema's all-time classics, this is a relic of a world of cinema which allowed itself to defy narrative and reality in the name of embodied meditation.