Which 1957 Swedish film features a knight playing chess with Death during the plague?

The 1957 Swedish film featuring a knight playing chess with Death during the plague is The Seventh Seal.

Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, the film follows Antonius Block, a disillusioned medieval knight returning from the Crusades to a Sweden devastated by the Black Death. Max von Sydow plays Block, while Bengt Ekerot portrays Death, whom the knight challenges to a chess match in hopes of delaying his fate.

Bergman developed the screenplay from his one-act play Wood Painting. The title refers to the seventh seal in the Book of Revelation, whose opening is associated with silence in heaven. The film uses medieval religious imagery, including the Dance of Death, to explore faith, mortality, doubt and the search for meaning.

Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring are also major Bergman films from around the same period, but neither contains the iconic chess game. Fanny and Alexander is a much later Bergman film, released in 1982.