After the enchanting Smiles of a Summer Night Bergman took several of the cast, stayed in period, but came up with something very different. This is best known for being about a knight and Death playing chess on the beach but that actually doesn't take up much of the running time: there's lots of the knight riding around with his squire, the squire rescuing a girl from being raped and having an on-going feud with the attempted rapist, some strolling players (one of several Shakespearean touches here - like in Sawdust and Tinsel there's a married couple where the girl is too hot for the guy), a trampy girl and her husband, the knight's wife.
Not terribly plotty - there's a lot of debate, and conversation - but there is an overall structure: death wants some people, and knocks them off gradually. Most people know the images of death on the beach and dancing off with people at the end, but he also chops down a tree with an actor up the top; there's knights going through the mist; the burning of a woman at the stake.
Not always a fun movie to watch - the people who go off to die at the end seem like nice people (not the rapist but the knight, the world weary squire, the young girl, the married couple)... I don't know why the actors deserve to live. But then that's the point. Despite all the jokes thrown at it, it lingers in the mind.
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