Max von Sydow, brooding star of Ingmar Bergman’s torment-ridden dramas, 90
Max von Sydow, who starred in brooding, metaphysical masterpieces by Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, notably as the medieval knight stalked by Death in a game of chess, and who later brought Nordic gravitas to a breathtaking array of roles, from Jesus to Satan, died March 8 at his home in the French region of Provence. He was 90.
His agent, Jean Diamond, confirmed his death. The cause was not immediately available.
Von Sydow did not transform the craft of acting in the way Marlon Brando did, nor did he epitomize the classical tradition as vividly as Laurence Olivier. But over a hectic career spanning seven decades and more than 150 movies, the breadth and lucidity of his performances – in roles that were commanding, stoic, tormented and, at times, broadly comic – elevated him to the highest echelon of international cinema.
Some of his best-remembered performances included the aged Jesuit priest battling for the soul of a possessed young girl in the horror juggernaut “The Exorcist” (1973), a dapper contract assassin who kills with precision and without malice in “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), a moody artist in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), a corrupt crime unit supervisor in “Minority Report” (2002) and a roguish French widower who struggles with his mortality and his son’s crippling stroke in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007).
Film critics showered him with superlatives. In 2015, Terrence Rafferty called 86-year-old von Sydow, then appearing in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and on the cable series “Game of Thrones,” the “greatest actor alive” for imbuing even the humblest of roles with a rich expressiveness. “Like a novelist,” Rafferty wrote, “he finds the human details that vivify the character.”
A sinewy 6-foot-4, with a blond crew cut, electric-blue eyes and a craggy, granite face, von Sydow was one of the screen’s most imposing male performers. He achieved cinematic immortality in “The Seventh Seal” (1957), in which he was a weary, soul-battered veteran of the Crusades who has come home to a Scandinavia terrorized by the Black Plague.
On a rocky seaside, he begins a chess game with Death to forestall the inevitable.
The film, with its allegorical framework and starkly beautiful camerawork by Gunnar Fischer, was a watershed for moviemaking that aspired to high art.
Von Sydow appeared in 10 more Bergman movies over the next 15 years, taking leading and supporting roles in films such as “Wild Strawberries” (1957), “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961) and “The Hour of the Wolf” (1966). He seemed to become an alter ego for the director through his portrayal of severe and cryptic husbands, fathers, lovers and artists wrestling internally with emotional and spiritual alienation.
Von Sydow said he had no ambitions for a career outside Sweden but faced an avalanche of offers after starring in Bergman’s Oscar-winning “The Virgin Spring” (1960), in which he played a 14th-century Swede who plots vengeance on the men who raped his daughter. He turned down the title villain in the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” but eventually agreed to play Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), studying English for more than a year to prepare for the role.