MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Belated RIP: Max Von Sydow Passes

Belated RIP: Max Von Sydow Passes

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
18 replies | jump to latest

I was going to write about Von Sydow's passing, but I forgot about it for awhile.

Now, I've remembered. I have a few things I'd like to say about the man. Psycho rubs up against them, so: not OT.

First up: though Von Sydow made his name via the films of Ingmar Bergman(more on that anon), I'd say his most famous role is , natch in The Exorcist.

In fact, Max Von Sydow IS The Exorcist, isn't he? Or is he? Its rather the same question you can put to The Godfather. Brando IS The Godfather. But not at the end. Pacino is.

The exorcism at the end of The Exorcist is performed famously by TWO Exorcists -- one old(Von Sydow, in aging make-up), one young(Jason Miller, a playwright converted to movie actor for a very short time.)

But the way I figure it, Von Sydow is in the famous poster, standing outside the house with "THE window" upstairs -- so he is the Exorcist after all. And about that window -- a steal from Mrs. Bates window in Psycho, or what? On the other hand, during the 1973/74 run of The Exorcist in Westwood near UCLA, the theater built a FAKE window(complete with white curtain that blew in the wind) on the side of the theater wall.

To me The Exorcist stands with Psycho and Jaws among the "three superthrillers of the 20th Century" -- blockbuster thrillers that we will likely never see the likes of again. The movies have changed and GOING to the movies have changed. (Eh...I'm willing to see my way clear to King Kong '33 and Alien as going on the "superthiller" list, but they are not quite in the thriller category.)

Certainly, Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws are the superthrillers of the MODERN part of the 20th century(cutting KK out) and I don't Alien made the same kind of money(and, it was SciFi, too.)

And so, the death of Von Sydow shrinks by that much more, the surviving casts of those superthrillers. Psycho has Vera Miles and Pat Hitchcock left(both around 90, either side, and both now unseen in public.) Jaws? Dreyfuss. And Mrs. Brody(aka Mrs. Universal_MCA, Lorraine Gary who was married to the late Sid Sheinberg, who ran the studio with Wasserman.
.)

Ellen Burstyn and the once young Linda Blair survive.

Von Sydow brought a certain "prestige gravitas" to The Exorcist, and I think a lot of us were surprised how young Von Sydow was when he played that REALLY old man. I haven't seen The Exorcist in awhile, but as I recall, Von Sydow is in the "heavy" opening scene in Iraq...and then gone for much of the movie before showing up at the end for the big showdown with Miss Pea Soup of 1973.

In fact, I tell ya: unlike such memorable characters as Norman, Marion, Arbogast, Chief Brody, Hooper, and Quint...its hard to really remember what Von Sydow DOES in The Exorcist , between his opening scene and the climax.

The heavy brooding went to Young Jason Miller (who never really had a star career, he's just this side of Jon Finch in working with a major director and going nowhere), and the major hysteria went to Ellen Burstyn(really good in her role as Shirley MacLaine the Star under another name but -- rather screaming, crying and all drained-out as the movie goes along.)

I"ve noted this before, but The Exorcist never "grabbed" me like Psycho and Jaws, and I stood in a very long line for a very long time to see it. I expect that's because Psycho and Jaws are, at base about: "Watch out, that monster's gonna kill ya!" and there are screamable shock killings, but the deaths in The Exorcist are unseen(the movie director) or "natural and/or sacrificial" (the exorcists.)

Still, The Exorcist WAS a phenomenon(I lived it) and I know how respected it is(well, when it is not hated, but I don't hate it), and that's why, Von Sydow's RIPs mainly said "Exorcist and Ingmar Bergman star Von Sydow dies."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Not quite to Bergman yet...

I think my favorite Max Von Sydow role is in Three Days of the Condor, released two years after The Exorcist so that Von Sydow was now a true "star name" in the all-star cast(also including Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, and John Houseman) supporting Robert Redford's on-the-run wrong man spy in NYC.

Von Sydow is the cold, quiet efficient hit man(leader of a small team) who kills all of Redford's co-workers at the beginning of the movie(including a pretty and nice young woman) and is the epitome of evil until the final scenes -- when he switches sides and kills Redford's enemy, declares his contract over, and offers Redford a lift to the airport! Rarely in movie history has a character gone from being the hissable ultra-villain to the sympathetic friend and voice of reason "just like that" but Von Sydow pulled it off. Something about his quiet cool did it -- and a hit man who doesn't care which side he's on -- just who is paying. Von Sydow gets a calm, pleasant sympathetic speech on these issues -- and warning Redford to run to Europe(Redford politely refuses) which was parodied on a Seinfeld episode: "It will happen this way...a car will pull up and a person you know -- a friend, someone you trust -- will open the door and invite you to come inside..."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Getting closer to Bergman...

...in the sixties and seventies, Hollywood started bringing Bergman's key players over to appear in studio films.

In 1970, Max Von Sydow and fellow Bergman player Bibi Anderson appeared as husband and wife in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. I love this movie for the stylish/hammy performances of Richard Boone, George Sanders, and Nigel Green(in that order), but sometimes I forget that Von Sydow and Anderson are even in the movie!

Irony: I ordered a copy of The Kremlin Letter on DVD a coupla years ago and only ONE actor from the cast is on the cover: Max Von Sydow. I wondered why, but now I realize why: because, thanks to The Exorcist, Von Sydow is the biggest "name" IN The Kremlin Letter(and its got Orson Welles, Barbara Parkins and lead Patrick O'Neal, too.)

Inside the DVD there is a photo of...Max Von Sydow and Bibi Anderson, emoting together. No Boone, no Sanders, no Green.

In "The Kremlin Letter" a young looking Von Sydow(only 4 years til the old man in The Exorcist) is the merciless mass killer of a KGB head; Anderson is his "forced" bride -- she despises her monster husband and seeks an affair with Patrick O'Neal to escape. Anderson -- as a pretty "foreign actress" -- is given some sexual scenes to perform (in lingerie). Von Sydow's ultra-villain eventually meets up with the man who will make him pay for all the murders he has committed or authorized. Von Sydow is not one of the "fun ones" in The Kremlin Letter, but he is certainly important to it.

So...Max Von Sydow. The Exorcist for all time. In two of my favorites - The Kremlin Letter and Three Days of the Condor -- and with a spiffy "friendly villain" role in the latter.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Von Sydow also famously played Jesus Christ in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1964) (co-starring John Wayne as The Centurian who says, "Truly he was the Son of God") ; Blofeld in Sean Connery's comeback as James Bond(Never Say Never Again) and , hilariously , support to those two Canadian Second City "hoseheads" , Bob and Doug MacKenzie, in Strange Brew.

But then there will always be: the Bergman pictures.

Ingmar Bergman comes under the heading of "I've read a lot about his movies but I haven't seen one of them." I know that Max Von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, and Liv Ullman got Hollywood careers from their Bergman work -- Hitchcock himself was considering Ullman for his spy movie "The Short Night"(cut short by his final illness, retirement, and death.)

And someday, I will watch one of those Bergman movies. A high school teacher was always recommending "The Seventh Seal" to us (does seeing Bill and Ted count? for that matter, does seeing Love and Death count?) And I guess The Virgin Spring of 1960 had just enough sexual violence to rank alongside Psycho as a "shocker" of its year. IMDb says Bergman directed 70 films -- which puts him well ahead of Hitchcock's 53.

The truth of the matter is I'm mainstream, not art, in my taste and capacities, but that doesn't mean I don't know how important Ingmar Bergman is to world cinema. And Max Von Sydow was one of his key players -- and got a Hollywood career out of it, including one of the biggest, most historic blockbusters in Hollywood history.

So RIP, Max Von Sydow. The Exorcist, Bergman -- The Kremlin Letter, Three Days of the Condor. And Strange Brew.

That's more than enough to remember him by.

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

So RIP, Max Von Sydow. The Exorcist, Bergman -- The Kremlin Letter, Three Days of the Condor. And Strange Brew.
That's more than enough to remember him by.

Von Sydow's Bergman work is very good. I know that The Seventh Seal is one that lots of people are drawn to but for me it's a little too straightforwardly symbolic to be especially captivating, and, yes, its most striking individual images have been lifted wholesale & parodied to death from Love & Death onwards. I'd recommend Virgin Spring over it, ditto Wild Strawberries (where vS only has a small part), also Winter Light (which Schrader recently virtually remade as 'First Reformed'), Shame, and, for an example of a late Bergman script directed by someone else, The Best Intentions.

As a 70s/80s kid, vS's role as Ming The Merciless in Flash Gordon (1980) looms large. Dude had an amazing voice when he wanted to really use it. Also good in Hannah & Her Sisters.

The 'professional very old guy' stage of vS's career for which his Exorcist role in heavy makeup had been an early audition is almost its own thing and must have been pretty lucrative: Minority Report, Shutter Island, Diving Bell and the Butterly, Force Awakens, the 3-eyed-Raven on Game of Thrones - that show really **** the bed at the end but vS's character was prominent in its glory years. He's a GoT star back from when the show was borderline great (vS's character was key to one of the show's biggest reveals/twists/scenes).

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Von Sydow's Bergman work is very good.

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Yes. I'm not sure if in the years(decades?) I have left, I'll be getting around to catching up on Bergman but -- "note to self" -- I should at least try, at least with the films you recommended. It remains personally interesting to me, on reflection, that I READ enough about enough of his films to have picked up on him "almost by osmosis," and as a matter of "show biz," I certainly knew that when Von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, and Liv Ullman came to Hollywood, they were "launched" from their Bergman pictures. I think that Hitchcock even used a Bergman supporting player or two in Topaz(the Russian defector, I think.)

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I know that The Seventh Seal is one that lots of people are drawn to but for me it's a little too straightforwardly symbolic to be especially captivating,

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Interesting...

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and, yes, its most striking individual images have been lifted wholesale & parodied to death from Love & Death onwards.

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Its possible that Woody Allen single-handedly jump-started a Bergman revival in the 70's by referencing him in a movie or two, and in interviews -- and then in the very Bergmanesque "Interiors"(and I haven't seen THAT, either - but I certainly read all the reviews about how Bergman it was.)

Can't rule out the "Bill and Ted" movie with a "Seventh Seal" Death in it, either. Though I'm not sure the young generation of that time got the connection.

Back to Woody. As much as Woody extolled and emulated Bergman(rather in parody in Love and Death, but with affection in Interiors, I'd gather) I found just one quote from Woody on Hitchcock in my years of reading and it was NOT praiseful: (paraphrased) "Hitchcock movies are like those paperbacks you read on a plane ride and then leave on the seat when the flight is over."

Oh, well...you can't love 'em all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'd recommend Virgin Spring over it, ditto Wild Strawberries (where vS only has a small part), also Winter Light (which Schrader recently virtually remade as 'First Reformed'), Shame, and, for an example of a late Bergman script directed by someone else, The Best Intentions.

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Helpful information. Is there a good source to see these movies? Are they on YouTube for "pay streaming," etc?

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As a 70s/80s kid, vS's role as Ming The Merciless in Flash Gordon (1980) looms large. Dude had an amazing voice when he wanted to really use it.

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Ah, Flash Gordon! In make-up and wig, he had it really going on. Comic Book Supervillain Deluxe -- a true "star villain" role.

Degrees of separation: Flash Gordon (very trippy with its Queen score) was directed by Mike Hodges, a Brit who worked intermittently but well -- he made the great gritty British gangster movie Get Carter of 1971(which constantly edges Dirty Harry almost out as my favorite of that year nowadays; Carter has a more gritty and banal reality to it). BUT; Hodges wrote a great essay for a Hitchcock Film Comment special edition, about how he saw "Psycho" in a packed old movie theater somewhere north of London in 1960. Hodges captured how this old theater -- usually empty and playing films nobody wanted to see -- came to packed life when Psycho played. And how his whole audience screamed to Arbogast at the stairs: "Don't go up there!"

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Also good in Hannah & Her Sisters.

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Ah yes -- Woody gets to direct a Bergman icon! He's around the edges, and its a sad role -- the old, cold intellectual snob who just barely holds on to a younger beauty -- and then loses her, becoming VERY emotional in his loss and new loneliness. He also has that great bit where he watches a bit of TV wrestling and intones: "Can you imagine...the mentality ...of people who watch WRESTLING?" (I always heard Woody's voice in that line.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The 'professional very old guy' stage of vS's career for which his Exorcist role in heavy makeup had been an early audition is almost its own thing

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Rarely has an actor in "Old age make-up" ACTUALLY looked old in that make-up. Von Sydow pulled it off and, amazingly, his "real" old man face was pretty much a match for Father Merrin.

and must have been pretty lucrative: Minority Report, Shutter Island, Diving Bell and the Butterly, Force Awakens, t

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He sure did work. Funny: I saw all those films except Butterfly -- and I only remember him in Minority Report(because of a certain LA Confidential-esque scene.) But yeah - he worked all the time didn't he?
Given that, its his "Three Days of the Condor" assassin that I will always find his "coolest" role to me.

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he 3-eyed-Raven on Game of Thrones - that show really **** the bed at the end but vS's character was prominent in its glory years. He's a GoT star back from when the show was borderline great (vS's character was key to one of the show's biggest reveals/twists/scenes).

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I dealt myself out of GOT -- not my genre, kinda, also I can't commit much to long form series over years anymore -- but clearly it was a entertainment landmark(I keep finding actors from it in current movies and TV shows I watch; I learn they were in GOT when I read reviews.) But truly Max Von Sydow went out in an "event" not too far removed from The Exorcist in size and impact.

I guess I never realized just how big, and how long...Von Sydow's career was.

But it all begins with Bergman.

PS. As a kid "learning movies," it took me the longest time to tell the difference between IngMAR Bergman and IngGRID Bergman. Funny, yes? The problem was more in reading about them, than in seeing them. I mean I got it then. And they eventually made a movie together, yes? It was fate.

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

IngMAR Bergman and IngGRID Bergman. Funny, yes? The problem was more in reading about them, than in seeing them. I mean I got it then. And they eventually made a movie together, yes? It was fate.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Yep, Autumn Sonata (1978). It's great... Ingrid plays a star concert pianist having a late in life reckoning with the less-naturally-talented, non-star daughter she's always neglected, pitied, etc.. It's in a sense interchangeable with any number of other Bergman films about pain inflicted within families, so it's perhaps important for most people not to watch more than a couple of such sterotypically Bergman-esque films (non-religious division) in a row.

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I"ve made a pact with myself to watch a few Bergman films. Maybe not this week, but fairly soon.

I think I mentioned that as a young teen in 1970, I bought a book called "Interviews with Film Directors." I bought it for the interview with Hitchcock (the one where he says "Psycho is fun to me...like a trip through the Haunted House at the fairground), but dutifully clawed my teenage way mentally through the other interviews, with included Americans like Otto Preminger(an immigrant) and Howard Hawks and "big foreign names" like Bergman, Kurosawa, and Truffaut. I can't say I saw many of the foreign films, but that book is where I learned who their directors WERE.

And I can't really recall if I got a grip on Ingmar Bergman's "themes" at the time. He seems to be a master of family angst and guilt. I don't know from his religious angle. I seem to recall an "almost a thriller but not" presentation in reviews to "Persona" and "Hour of the Wolf"(was that his?) Anyway, I'll give him a try.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

At the *time* AS was seen as a minor variation on previous Ingmar Bergman outings....and it is. But that's only a problem if you're obsessively watching each new Bergman film as it comes out the way a lot of people were in the '60s and '70s.

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Is this a variation on the "decline" that Hitchcock had in the 60s...somewhat lifted in the 70's at the end, but not entirely. Is QT right? Do ALL older directors decline?

I guess the answer with Autumn Sonata is : no. But I have to go look -- did Bergman continue into the 80's? I don't recall.

And this: I would suppose that directors like Bergman then and Woody Allen now -- who work low budget, small scale, intimate actors' pieces -- can last longer in their later years than Hitchcock did. For Hitchcock couldn't do movies as intricate as Rear Window, lush as Vertigo, or big as North by Northwest in his later years. Ironically, Psycho WAS low budget and kind of intimate, but so spectacular in cinematics and content...he couldn't do that again either(though I contend that Frenzy came surprisingly close.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Now, however, most people get to encounter AS by itself from which POV it's just a beautifully made, serious drama. Ingrid couldn't have picked a better showcase for herself to go out on.

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I recall that spectacular yet sad AFI salute hosted by Ingrid Bergman of Hitchcock in 1979. He looked near death and he did die about a year later, in 1980. Bergman knew death was coming for Hitch, and she cried at the end of the show and embraced him with an unending hug of raw emotion, as Cary Grant looked on -- Notorious decades later.

The surprise: I don't think Bergman lived much longer than Hitchcock did she?

Anyway, the 70's for Bergman brought her an Oscar for Murder on the Orient Express(that she professed from the stage, should have gone to another nominee), Autumn Sonata, and a fond farewell to Hitch that was broadcast worldwide.

And from 1969, I always liked Cactus Flower, in which a lovely but rather matronly Bergman was paired for mature sophisticated romance with...Walter Matthau? You'd think from Cary Grant to Walter Matthau was a comedown, but it didn't play that way, because, as Matthau himself described himself: "I'm the Urkrainian Cary Grant."

PS. I have always loved how, at the Hitchcock tribute, Ingrid Bergman enthusiastically introduced Anthony Perkins (a co-star and real-life lover target of Bergman in "Goodbye , Again") in her robust accent:

"Ladies and gentlemen...An-TONE-EE PARE-KANS"

Hah.

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

And from 1969, I always liked Cactus Flower, in which a lovely but rather matronly Bergman was paired for mature sophisticated romance with...Walter Matthau? You'd think from Cary Grant to Walter Matthau was a comedown, but it didn't play that way, because, as Matthau himself described himself: "I'm the Ukrainian Cary Grant."

Well said. Bergman's really good in CF, and she kind of sneaks up on you as the movie starts to drift away from Goldie Hawn. Goldie's so cute that we initially just give 50-ish Ingrid bravery points for appearing alongside her, but as things develop she turns out to be a catch that Matthau's *so lucky* will have him. Nice movie in the year of Manson gang & Wild Bunch.

[–] liscarkat (16530) 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Nice read EC but nobody mentioned "Hawaii" (1966). A top 5 grosser for the year, though heavily panned. After all these years people still comment on how much they hated Rev. Hale. I did also but around ten years ago I came around 360 on his character that I am now sure Sydow noticed. He really did care for the Hawaiians and noticed the flaws in his own character. Still, others are non-forgiving in their memory of him. I continually watched this on airings because I found the scenery, Andrews and score quite fulfilling enough. Now I add von Sydows characterization to that list.

[–] liscarkat (16530) 4 years ago

He's not in "Psycho", so he's irrelevant here.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think Von Sydow was under consideration to play Sam Loomis..having just come off of some important Bergman hits.

Hitchcock was thinking of doing Sam as a more "stoic, Scandinavian man of the earth type."

But Lew Wasserman wanted John Gavin in the part...

...not to mention, "The Exorcist"(with Von Sydow) and "Jaws" are forever linked to "Psycho" so he Von Sydow is part of a "superthriller trilogy"

Exorcist director William Friedkin says he saw "Psycho" 100 times and it influenced how he made "The Exorcist" -- the fall of the psychiatrist to the carpeted floor is shot like "Arbogast's fall."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Nice read EC but nobody mentioned "Hawaii" (1966). A top 5 grosser for the year, though heavily panned.

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I vaguely recall that Hawaii was panned, but I didn't know it was a top grosser of the year.

That makes sense, though, because growing up in the 60's, I recall the book Hawaii being on many coffee tables in many homes. That's how movies often were in those days -- a big bestseller would come out and everybody would wait to see "the major motion picture."

Also interesting: Julie Andrews had that spectacular one-two punch of "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music," but in 1966 she appeared in both Hawaii and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain ...and neither was seen to be a great film (though evidently Hawaii was a big hit, and I think Torn Curtain did OK, what with Paul Newman and Hitchcock along.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

After all these years people still comment on how much they hated Rev. Hale. I did also but around ten years ago I came around 360 on his character that I am now sure Sydow noticed. He really did care for the Hawaiians and noticed the flaws in his own character. Still, others are non-forgiving in their memory of him. I continually watched this on airings because I found the scenery, Andrews and score quite fulfilling enough. Now I add von Sydows characterization to that list.

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I appreciate hearing that "read" on a movie that -- I will confess -- I never saw. Now, maybe I will. "I got time."

Though I remember this: I knew of Max Von Sydow from his Bergman films -- they were covered in national magazines and the LA Times -- and I sort of noticed that he was appearing in American studio films -- The Greatest Story Ever Told, Hawaii...he got an American career quite quickly....and then solidified it with The Exorcist.