Pity they didn't mention Dune. Not the best film, nor a big role for him, but for young me it was still a wonderful experience to watch this. He replaced the imagined book version of Kynes forever in my head.
Peace.
EDIT: The scene I referenced is 13 minutes and 43 seconds in. Also, I had forgotten that there were two shooters in the beginning. I only remembered 'the mailman'.
Dune is a great movie. It's just not completed. The first part, up to the meeting with the fremen,is great. Set, costume design, music are all top notch, and actors are all great. But it would be 6 hours long to fit all the book, and the producers didn't know they can split movies in two parts like "It" or "Kill Bill"
Stellar performance as the weary knight in "The Seventh Seal", a film more than 60 years old. Well worth seeing today and to some - with the elements of a plague in the background - of particular contemporary relevance.
Reviews of the film tend to focus on the serious themes, which creates an impression of worthy dullness but it's actually very entertaining and von Sydow is brilliant. Sad news, but he had a great run.
Max played a critical role in what I think is an under-rated science fiction movie called “Until the End of the World.” He comes into the story pretty late, and is crucial to a tricky transition from a “road” movie to something far more dramatic.
That seemed to be a popular role for him later in life—a sort of super character actor who could come in and punch up the gravitas of any scene with just a few lines. I think that says a lot about his abilities as an actor.
To Americans with Scandinavian/Swedish ancestors (there sure are a lot of you), I really recommend watching these two movies starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman:
They are based on a series of novels (1949 and onwards) by Vilhelm Moberg chronicling the fate of a family who decides to migrate from famine/poverty-stricken Sweden to the US in the mid 1800s. A full 25% of the Swedish population ended up migrating to the US.
These two movies made Max iconic and so beloved to pretty much everyone in Sweden. They are also fantastic movies; I find myself rewatching them once every 5 years or so.
One of my favourite performances of his was in another Jan Troell film, Hamsun (1996) [1], which was masterfully co-written by the great novelist Per Olov Enquist.
In it, von Sydow plays the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, who, after WW2, was accused of having collaborated with the Nazis. His portrayal of Hamsun is one of the most nuanced, moving performances I've seen on the screen. It's a superb film. He didn't play many main characters in his life, certainly not in his American movies, but he should have.
(An interesting fact that will elude most non-Nordic viewers is that the cast is made up of a blend Norwegian, Swedish and Danish actors, and they all speak their own native language; von Sydow performs the role in Swedish, for example, even though Hamsun was Norwegian. The film is so well made that it doesn't make any difference at all.)
This and Jan Troell's other films used to be on Criterion's streaming service, but they're not there anymore. Hamsun is only available through Kanopy, I believe, which requires a library card from one of their supported libraries. The Emigrants can be rented on Amazon Prime Video and Vudu, and the The New Land is on iTunes/Apple TV. But it's often difficult to find these masterpieces.
Antonius Block: I met Death today. We are playing chess
Out of all the roles he played I remember him best as the knight from The Seventh Seal. Somehow his looks, demeanor and way of talking perfectly fit that of a stereotypical medieval knight.
He's forever in the canon as the protagonist in The Seventh Seal, of course.
Every film buff will have something in particular that stands out in their memory about Max Von Sydow. For me, that would be the as the mad scientist, Dr Farber, in "Until the End of the World"-- a sprawling train-wreck of a film that I will always remember fondly, I don't care what the pro-critics think!
He was perfect as Leland Gaunt in Needful Things. And his little turn as Joubert in Three Days of the Condor makes the life of a professional assassin seem almost reasonable.
He has but a scene in Conan the Barbarian, but what a scene! "What daring! What outrageousness! What insolence! What arrogance! ... I salute you."
What an amazing actor, he had so many fine performances during his career. I loved him in Dune, and also this cameo as King Osric in Conan the Barbarian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVTOag1lQHc
The Magician, Wild Strawberries, Through a glass darkly, The Virgin Spring and the Seventh Seal. These films are 50 years old! Being in these films alone would be enough to qualify as a cinema legend and he still had nearly 50 years to go! Extraordinary!!!
I was almost offended when Facebook popped me an article named "The Game Of Thrones and Judge Dredd star died", and none of the hundreds of comments ever mentioned anything but the three-eyed raven. Sad.
I remember him more from things like 3 days of condor or Lynch's Dune. But 7th seal is a true classic in any and all possible ways. An unmistakable actor.
His performance in Three Days of the Condor was masterful. He portrayed a nondescript, unnoticeable man who was nevertheless the leader of a deadly group of assassins, operating in the shadows.
At the time, people were mumbling about Robert Redford, the star. But von Sydow owned every scene he was in.
My favorite performance of Max Von Sydow was Frederick, in Hannah and Her Sisters. His critique of television and contemporary values becomes truer every year.
