10 Essential Movies Guillermo Del Toro Demands You See

9. The Seventh Seal

The films of Guillermo del Toro might not immediately strike the viewer as a product of the influence of Ingmar Bergman, but look a little closer and their fascination with the workings of religious faith and the mythical landscapes of folklore becomes evident. The Seventh Seal - widely cited as Bergman's best and often misunderstood as a far more difficult and pretentious movie than it actually is - famously tells of a knight challenging Death to a game of chess against a backdrop of the Black Death. It's a contest which symbolises so much more, with the images Bergman presents depicting a world in which God's silence is deafening. Death and faith prevail throughout the work of Guillermo del Toro, too, particularly in the body of Spanish-language work he considers his "adult" movies. He describes The Seventh Seal and Fanny And Alexander as "the primal pulse of a children€™s fable told by an impossibly old and wise narrator," words which could be equally applicable to movies such as Pan's Labyrinth. Also recommended: Fanny And Alexander