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of Gianfranco Massetti "And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels standing before God, and were given seven trumpets them ... And the first angel sounded,, and there was hail and fire mixed with blood were cast upon the earth, and the third part of the earth was burned up, and the third part of trees was burnt up, and burned all the grass was green. And the second angel blew the a kind of trumpet and the great mountain of fire burning with fire was thrown from the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood ... And the third angel blew his trumpet. And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch ... The star called Wormwood ... " The quote of the Apocalypse of John (8, 1-11) is derived from the script of The Seventh Seal, the famous film by Ingmar Bergman in 1956. The text was translated into Italian by Alberto Criscuolo, which is based on the original manuscript. This version was published in 1994 at the publishing house in Milan Hyperborea. The only previously outstanding translations of the script of The Seventh Seal was in English. Alberto Criscuolo writes in the notes following the translation: "Why the title The Seventh Seal? Alluding to what he wants? She feels the film's voice-over reading of the verses of the Apocalypse of St. John, the twenty-seventh and last of the writings of the New Testament: "The book written within and outside and sealed with seven seals" (Chapter V). The book was wrapped in sheets of parchment, one after the other around a stick and sealed, so were not beds. And 'the book which contains the future and will be read by the Lamb, ie Christ, "a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent into all the earth." The horns signify the omnipotence, omniscience eyes, the spirits do his bidding. The first seal reveals the conquest, the second war, hunger on the third, the fourth death, the martyrs of the fifth, the sixth universal upheaval, the tragic end of the seventh apocalyptic vision. "And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about half an hour": the man is aware of the mysteries of life in this half ' now? Similarly, the death knight who procrastinate challenging chess, for a final action that makes sense ", can give meaning to his life?" (I. Bergman, The Seventh Seal, tad. It. Alberto Criscuolo, Milan, 1999, and V., p. 87). The reasons for the summons of the Apocalypse by Bergman probably reside in the memory of the upheaval that occurred during the last world war, and particularly in the memory of the disaster of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But we can ask ourselves what are the reasons behind this renewed interest in The Seventh Seal. One possible answer lies in the fact that the millennial fear of deadlines, to be considered anything but delivered in the past, continues to fascinate contemporary, attracting to itself a host of new people always ready to interpret the "signs of the times." Suffice it for us an example of how, a few years ago, has drawn attention to the fact that the Chernobyl disaster could be read in key millennial-apocalyptic, as the name of the locality would in Russian means "wormwood ". Supposed or real, the suggestions which may therefore have suggested a revival of the work of Bergman may be numerous, and in the notes by Alberto Criscuolo, there is the curiosity of those who wonders about the deep meaning of the film, some insight from the director around the parable of human events and the meaning of existence. We are probably in the fourteenth century, Antonius Block is returning with his squire from the Crusade to the Holy Land and met a character quite mysterious: it has very pale face and is dressed in a dark cloak and a hood. "Who are you?", Asks the knight. And the character responds: "I am death." Death came to take the knight, but in exchange for a chess game they can get an extension to the fulfillment of his destiny. Death will play like the pieces fits with blacks, and therefore the rider has the advantage of the move. The game begins: After moving the first piece, the two leave the knight and his squire reached. Both take up the journey home, but waits for them on the path of the epidemic plague. They pass a caravan of strolling players, and while the occupants are awakened from sleep, the two go on ignoring them in their own way. These two men, a woman and a child: Skat, Jof, his wife Mia and their son, Michael, whose name recalls that of the Archangel Michael, and another passage in the Apocalypse of John (12, 7 ). Mia and Jof discuss the future of their son: "I want Mikael to have a better life than ours," she says. It assures Jof: "Mikael will be a great acrobat or a juggler who manages to make the number more amazing ... Have a ball to remain motionless in the air." Meanwhile, the knight and his squire have reached a church where they meet a painter who frescoed is a Dance of Death. We must note here an anachronism. In fact, the subject of the Dance Macabre is back a few decades to the spread of the Black Death in Europe. It is said around the fifteenth century and owes its origin to the representation of religious Mysteries staged in front of churches. The adjective attributed to the macabre Dance of Death is rather to look for in a poem of 1376, composed by Jean de greyhound after the epidemic of plague that had raged in Paris two years earlier: "Je fis de Macabre la danse ..." writes the author miraculously escaped the disease. And macabre is perhaps the proper name of some poet or actor. The subject of the Dance Macabre which is tied to the apocalyptic-millenarian thought it was still frowned upon by the authorities of the time, as reflected in the thought that the face of death all the men came to be the same. In the church where the Dance of Death frescoes painter, Antonius Block is flat near a confessional. Led to believe to speak with a priest who hears the innermost secrets of the soul is but Death, who is thus able to say what will be his game plan. The chess pieces represent the image of a traditional society, or more broadly the image of a world where light and darkness, white and black checkerboard, correspond to the double condition of being in the state of the event and not to event: Arjuna and Krishna, the ego and the Self, the mortal and the immortal. The modern rules of chess have been established around the fifteenth century. Despite playing Antonius Block with Death takes place in the fourteenth century, it is a completely modern game in which they feel vaguely echoing some reasons that are their existentialism of Heidegger: "I want to talk as frankly as possible, but my heart is empty - says the knight to Death - The void is a mirror looking at me. I see the reflection of my image and I feel disgust and fear. For my indifference to the next I am isolated from human company. Now I live in a world of ghosts, locked up in my dreams and my fantasies. " The same existential meaning takes on a religious problem, and the size of God referred to by Antonius Block is ontological rather than religious: "It 'so cruelly inconceivable to perceive God with their senses, why should hide in a fog of half-promises and no one has seen miracles? " - Says Knight, wants to die-offs of that before "guarantees" by Death. And he continues: "Why can not I kill God within myself, why I still live in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse and I want to tear it from my heart, and why, despite everything, continues to be a reality illusion from which I can not free myself ... I want to know. I do not believe. Do not assume. I want to know. I want God to me his hand, which I reveal his face, talk to me ... I call it in the darkness, but sometimes it is as if did not exist. "" Perhaps not exist ", the replication Death. And the knight replies: "Then life is an absurd mistake. No one can live with death before his eyes, knowing that everything is nothing." And the knight there is even refer to the theme of '"inauthentic existence": "My life was empty, I went to hunt, to travel, to speak at random of things insignificant. I say this without bitterness or regret, because I know that the life of most people is so. " But Antonius Block wants to make "a final action that makes sense": his chess game with Death. Outside the church, he meets some of the soldiers that put strains on a witch. Resumed the journey, and came close to a group of houses, his squire walks in search of a well where the water supply. In one of the houses meets Raval, who is robbing a poor widow. The squire recognize it: it is the same man who years before had led his master to embrace the cause of the crusade. He puts it on the run and then calls on the widow to join him and the knight. In the vicinity of an inn, Skat, Mia and Jof are representing a comedy. The argument about a woman's infidelity and jealousy of her husband. Ben took the joke turns into an episode of "real", with escape that takes the Skat with Plog the blacksmith's wife. This is a comedy in the play and once again, as in the case of chess or the Dance of Death in the Mysteries, a symbolic representation: The theater is a picture of the world which in turn is a picture of the manifestation of . The play staged by strolling players abruptly stops at the appearance of a procession of flagellants that announce their presence with the arrival of the epidemic pestilential. In the nearby tavern, the knight with his squire chat, Plog the blacksmith goes in search of his wife, converse and other guests on the Last Judgement and signs that constitute the news. It also appears that instigates the blacksmith Raval against Jof, while not far from the inn is located at the horseman on the bandwagon and talk to my actors. Jof occurred, the knight offers them to cross the forest at night, traveling in the opposite direction to the path along which the plague is spreading. The rider takes up the game of chess with Death. In the evening, the actors, Antonius Block and his squire come together at the inn, where he joins them also Plog. That night, entered the forest and encounter a procession of soldiers leading the witch at the stake seen the day before by the rider in front of the church. At the edge of the forest, the company also meets Skat and the blacksmith's wife, who immediately rushes against his rival. These, to save himself, pretends to commit suicide with a dagger scene. Let all move away and then climbs up a tree to rest a little. Awakened by the sound of a saw, he feels himself to be in the presence of Death, which is cutting the tree on which he had fled: his time has expired. Following the meeting with Raval. Struck by the pestilential disease, he too lies near a fallen tree. Meanwhile, the knight returns to his chess game with Death, who suddenly becomes manifest even at Jof. They then took with him his wife and son, and away from the group out of the forest. Aware of their departure Antonius Block can finally lose the game: he managed to cheat death long enough to allow the salvation of the two actors and the small Mikael. The next day, Antonius Block reaches his castle where he finds his bride, now grown old. Their fate and the fate of his friends takes place. Far away, Jof's wife tells of having had a vision: Death drags with him to a dance the knight, the squire Plog his wife and all the others, and at the end of the parade is Skat, the jester, "the rain falls on their faces and wash their cheeks the salt tears. " Jof and Mia are safe and perhaps one day, Mikael can stop time, defeat the ancient serpent and contemplate the eternal Being in its stillness, motionless in the air like a ball.