"I've been to Atlantic City a hundred times, but I've never seen Death walking on a beach!"

—Diner (1982)

"This film is the best film ever made, be it Swedish or American": it must be true, the IMDb says so. Not only that, but Woody Allen reckons it's "the definitive film on the subject of Death." And even Ingmar Bergman grudgingly admits, "This is one of the few films close to my heart...I find it even, strong, and vital." How could I have neglected The Seventh Seal for so long? It's not what you'd call a lost movie, or even rare. It shows up on television from time to time, in repertory theatres more often, and on the college film society circuit almost constantly—so it's not like there haven't been opportunities.

Of course there was never any time. I'm a working hack, there are always more pressing movies of the moment, but unlike other glaring personal omissions—and nothing glares quite like an unwatched Bergman—The Seventh Seal is not a film I have a sense of saving. There are movies one holds in reserve, like fine wine, waiting for just the right occasion. When I was writing my book on John Cassavetes, I'd never seen Love Streams (1984), and consciously held back from doing so until I was ready to begin that chapter: I had sensed the movie would take the form of a valediction, and it would be wrong to get there too early. By coincidence, in the course of writing the book I met the British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen—another big Cassavetes fan—and he told me the very same thing: Love Streams would be there for him when he was ready.

The Seventh Seal wasn't like that. Rather the contrary; I think I had a sneaking feeling of having gone past it somehow. My first Bergmans were Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and Wild Strawberries (1957), a blissful and melancholy double-bill for an impressionable 17-year-old. I remember I came out of the cinema and immediately bought a book on theology, morality and the movies—notch up another convert for Ingmar! The late teens still seems to me the perfect time for the gloomy Swede's severe soul-searching and aestheticised sensuality.

I'm not numb to Bergman's intensity and unfashionable intelligence—nor am I immune to the lofty disregard in which this formerly esteemed auteur has come to languish since retiring from the frontline 20 years ago. The interim hasn't been an era of High Seriousness. I confess that part of the reason I've avoided The Seventh Seal is a natural disinclination to look Death in the face, but I'm speaking of the film's fatal literalism, not mortal dread.

Is it Bergman's fault if this image has become iconic: the white-faced scowl under a murky cowl? Not just iconic but pop. The Grim Reaper who resurfaces in Love and Death (1975), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), and even The Last Action Hero (1993) can't help but suffer from diminishing returns...Death, where is thy sting? The starkness of this image, the chess pieces in the sand, the bony theatricality of Max von Sydow's pilgrim knight, the over-arching design of the allegory, even Bergman's self-consciously Shakespearean comic relief: all these invite parody as surely as canonization. Both conditions are a kind of living death for any work of art.

The truth is, now that I have come to watch this film, so long a silent presence on the video shelf, part of me feels that I've already seen it—or worse, that the act of watching it has become redundant. Its aesthetic qualities are obvious and definitive, but then they were already well known. Bergman's modernity seems antiquated, his romanticism forced, his virtuosity solipsistic. Only the anguish still seems in anyway vital.

I wonder if it's a coincidence that Bergman's fall from gracious critical fervour coincides with the diminution of film. We consume movies now in ways undreamed of in the 50s and 60s. The mystique of cinema-going—a congregation alone in the dark, in communion with a flickering light which is also a shadow—has been supplanted by the pulse of electrons on a monitor. On video and DVD, films have taken material form that we believe we can own, and all too easily objectify and fetishize. Wasn't the older model more conducive to Bergman's dancing intangibles?

The Seventh Seal is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.