Celebrity Biographies
Max von sydow
Ingmar Bergman catapulted him to fame. There was a special magnetism between the actor and the director, and together they collaborated on more than a dozen films in which Max Von Sydow’s face revealed the restless personality of his mentor. The legendary interpreter died in Paris (he had become a French national), on March 8, 2020. “With a broken heart and infinite sadness, we announce with extreme pain the death of Max Von Sydow on March 8, 2020,” he wrote. producer Catherine Von Sydow, his wife.
Max Von Sydow (Lund, Scania, Sweden, 1929) discovered his passion for acting from a young age. After having started in the theater with a company that he founded together with some schoolmates, and after a few appearances at the Dramaten in Stockholm, he began his film career under the direction of director Alf Sjöberg . First in Bara en Mor and then in Miss Julia , a film adaptation of Strindberg’s classic, which he wonthe PalmGold at Cannes.
In 1955 he moved to Malmö, where he met his future mentor, Ingmar Bergman . When he began to gain notoriety in Europe as a result of his appearances in the films of this Swedish master, offers began to pour in from Hollywood, some as tempting as the role of Dr. No in the first installment of James Bond, but at first He rejected this kind of projects.
As his mentor’s right-hand man, his usual roles have been directly related to the usual themes of the Swedish filmmaker: death, religion, loneliness, love, old age and everything that surrounds the human condition. Subjects that, without a doubt, Von Sydow has been able to defend with skill before the cameras. In the masterpiece The Seventh Seal , Von Sydow played a gentleman who decides to risk his own life withdeathin an exciting game of chess. The actor reflected here the existential crisis of man when trying to give meaning to his life. In The Hour of the Wolf , the actor was a disturbed artist, who draws his nightmares in a notebook in an attempt to understand his inner crises. These were roles that the actor defined as “characters who want to believe and can’t, those who don’t even believe, or those who have a puerile vision of life; They are probably characters that reflect Bergman’s internal conflicts.
In 1965 he agreed to embody Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told ( George Stevens ) and, after the success achieved, he moved with his family to the United States. From this moment he established himself as an interpreter outside of Europe.
But the actor, very committed to the cinema of his land, never stopped starring in the roles that continued to be offered to him from the Old World. At the end of the sixties he would work again with Bergman in several productions: La hora del lobo , La verga , Pasión and La coma .
From the 70s the most productive moment of his Hollywood career began. In this decade he came to prominence as the aged priest Merrin in The Exorcist , William Friedkin ‘s adaptation of the well-known best-seller, in which he attempted to expel demons from the possessed daughter of a desperate Ellen Burstyn .
During these years he participated in films whose theme was far removed from the Bergmanian transcendental style, although they were great films, equally; We are talking about films like The Three Days of the Condor , by Sydney Pollack , Hannah and Her Sisters , by Woody Allen , or Dune , by David Lynch . Also in the European cinema that he made during these years, the Swedish actor would continue to shine with his own light. Danish director Bille August ‘s films deserve special mention : Pelle the Conqueror , for which Max Von Sydow received an Oscar nomination, and The Best Intentions, Palme d’Or in Cannes. And his participation in a Spanish film, Intacto , by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo .
After many jobs as an interpreter, he decided to try directing and embarked on his first project as a director. It was in 1988 with the film Katinka , a Danish-Swedish co-production based on the novel “Ved Vejen” by Herman Bangs. A slow and boring movie about a stranger who comes to a small village and slightly disturbs the peace of its inhabitants. The bad reviews received made him realize that his thing was to get in front of the goal.
Already in the last days of his career –which is still very active–, he would continue working under the orders of great filmmakers, such as Steven Spielberg (in Minority Report ) or Martin Scorsese (in Shutter Island , currently in post-production).
It is true that much of his success is owed to Bergman, but we must not detract from an actor who has so brilliantly managed to reflect the dramas of the human condition. If we ourselves do not understand them, how much more difficult must it be to interpret them…