Max von Sydow, 1929-2020

Max von Sydow (r.) plays a game of chess against Death in The Seventh Seal (1956)

The death has been announced of Swedish-born actor Max von Sydow, who died yesterday about a month before what would have been his 91st birthday.

Von Sydow had a long career starting in his native Sweden where he made several movies with Ingmar Bergman. The Seventh Seal might be the best remembered, but among others would be Winter Light and Through a Glass Darkly. He also worked with other Swedish directors, notably Jan Troell in The Emigrants and the sequel The New Land, where he played a poor Swedish farmer married to Liv Ullmann who decides to leave for America since he can't survive farming in Sweden any more:



With fame, Hollywood called, and von Sydow played quite a few roles in Hollywood, and an extremely varied lot at that. I had forgotten that he was Ming the Merciless in the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, or Ernst Blofeld in Never Say Never Again (although some don't consider that a real Bond movie, of course). There's also Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told. In another religous theme, he played the priest in The Exorcist:



Von Sydow's career continued late into life, having appeared in 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens and on TV in Game of Thrones, among other roles.

I haven't seen yet whether TCM has scheduled a programming tribute in von Sydow's honor.