One of the more unlikely sights in 1960s Hollywood cinema is John Wayne’s Centurion, in Roman toga and sandals, standing beneath the crucifix and declaiming in his rasping, frontier voice that “Truly, this man was the son of God!” The unfortunate Christ, nailed up above him, is Max von Sydow. Appearing in just one scene, as King Osric, von Sydow's job in Conan was to drip some respectability on the leather and steel with his voice, then get out of the way so Arnold Schwarzenegger can get back to killing.īut what a scene! Tasked essentially with assigning Conan and his allies a mission, von Sydow projects aristocratic condescension, banquet hall joviality and heartbreak at once.Max von Sydow as Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) While von Sydow was practically a sci-fi and fantasy b-movie staple in the 1980s- Flash Gordon (1980), Dreamscape (1984) and Dune (1984) are all worth a watch-it's his minor role in 1982's Conan the Barbarian that feels most representative of his position in Hollywood at the time.
MAX VON SYDOW FULL
Even after slaughtering an office full of intelligence analysts, Joubert maintains a gentlemanly professionalism that captured perfectly the coldblooded precision of the CIA's destabilizing tactics around the world. Rather than the Old World largesse that would serve him so well in genre movies (like our next pick), Three Days of the Condor demonstrates von Sydow's talent for urbane, European efficiency in Sydney Pollack's conspiracy theory thriller as Joubert, a CIA hitman. But here are five movies surveying the different phases in this remarkable actor's varied career. With more than 150 credits to his name, including two Academy Award nominations (for Pelle the Conqueror and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), there's no way to easily sum up Max von Sydow. Those with an accent are the bad guys.'īut while von Sydow was dissatisfied with his typecasting as the villainous foreigner, it gave his career a two-sided potency, as he took iconic roles in both the arthouse and the grindhouse. "Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. "I've always been bothered by the fact that I am so foreign in the United States," von Sydow said, while promoting his role as a priest in the 1990 made-for-TV movie, Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes. But his collaborations with Bergman built upon his resonant voice, providing a spiritual power that he would bring to both silly and serious roles-a gravitas that could be authoritative, or, more often, add cavernous depths to an otherwise paper-thin screen villain. Tall and lean, with a handsome, world-weary face that cragged over the nearly seven decades of his career, von Sydow always had a powerful screen presence. Von Sydow would perform in ten more movies for Bergman, including The Virgin Spring, Hour of the Wolf, and Wild Strawberries. Max von Sydow plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot) in 'The Seventh Seal.' Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
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