When the great Swedish actor Max von Sydow died last week at the age of 90, it was the mark of a robust and catholic career that there was little consensus between news outlets over which of his performances should lead the obituaries. More highbrow publications foregrounded his longtime collaboration with Ingmar Bergman, while others leaned toward English-speakers with The Exorcist. Blockbuster-oriented showbiz sites referred to him as the star of Game of Thrones and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. One headline briefly went viral on Twitter declaring “Max von Sydow, voice of Vigo in Ghostbusters 2, dead at 90”: it turned out to be from a dedicated Ghostbusters news site, so fair enough, but still. IMDb, meanwhile, has him indexed as “Max von Sydow: actor, Flash Gordon”. It’s safe to say, he was many things to many people.
With more than 115 films made across 70 years, Von Sydow’s career is easier than most to honour with a streaming marathon. Some of his most essential showcases – Jan Troell’s stirring, beautiful family saga The Emigrants and The New Land; Ingmar Bergman’s shattering, surreal wartime marriage study Shame – can only be found on DVD in the UK. But through the likes of Amazon, iTunes and the BFI Player, you can programme a pretty thorough overview of a remarkable career, one marked as much by the grace and wit that Von Sydow brought to very serious films as the committed gravitas he brought to throwaway entertainment.
You have to start with the Bergmans, don’t you? The 11 films he made with the Swedish auteur, from 1957’s The Seventh Seal (on BFI Player) to 1971’s The Touch (ditto) were instrumental in shaping the creative legacies of both men, even if the popular reputation they gained for granite-heavy solemnity isn’t entirely justified. The playing-Death-at-chess metaphor of The Seventh Seal is so easily parodied that many forget, or never find out, how nimble, poetic and drily funny Bergman’s existential fantasy is. It immediately and indelibly established Von Sydow’s screen image of stoic dignity, though that would later be pushed by the howling despair of his role as a grieving, vengeful father in The Virgin Spring (on Amazon), Bergman’s single most brutal, wounded work. And the still underrated The Magician (Amazon) is as complex and changeable a showcase as Bergman ever wrote for the star: a cool, frightening character study of a travelling 19th-century illusionist who may or may not have some manner of magic touch.
Away from Bergman, Von Sydow still fared best with his fellow Scandinavians. It’s a shame his Troell collaborations have yet to hit any UK streaming sites, but Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror is on iTunes, and indispensable for Von Sydow scholars. His mighty, heart-tearing tour de forceas an immigrant father trying to forge a new life for his son in rural Denmark earned him his first of two Oscar nominations (the other came a few years ago for keeping his head silently above the affected mess of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), and conveys bone-deep pain and parental desperation without a hint of trumped-up sentimentality. August’s effective, affecting film, a Palme d’Or winner in its day, hasn’t aged as strikingly, but the performance (left) still stuns.
Von Sydow’s international career, meanwhile, is a fascinating mixed bag, completing an impressive checklist of top-tier auteurs – from Martin Scorsese to Lars von Trier, David Lynch to Wim Wenders – though not always in top-tier roles. His best, most fully shaded English-language performances came in The Exorcist (on Chili) and Hannah and Her Sisters (Amazon), in which his funny but lacerating portrayal of bottomless depression proved a perfect spiritual foil to Woody Allen’s more self-aware, Bergman-fixated Eeyore-ism.
That’s not to dismiss the deadpan camp of his aged-cheese villainy in Flash Gordon (free on Now TV, if you must) or Never Say Never Again (iTunes). Or even his surprisingly elegant, expressive Hollywood debut as Jesus Christ in the otherwise very stolid, very long mid-1960s biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told – on Amazon if you have a whole rainy afternoon to kill. That’s a role impossible to play credibly without equal parts integrity and plunging reserves of darkness: from his first duel with Death to his final passing, Von Sydow had both.
New to streaming & DVD this week
21 Bridges
(Sony, 15)
A surprisingly tight and tidy police thriller that benefits from Chadwick Boseman’s swaggering charisma, as a detective locking down Manhattan in pursuit of cop killers, to juice up its lean, B-movie plotting.
Judy and Punch
(Picturehouse, 15)
Overlooked in cinemas, Mirrah Foulkes’s flawed but invigorating debut gives the titular puppet panto an elaborate feminist spin, shifting into a mob-justice allegory that escalates in wild and unexpected ways.
Them That Follow
(Sony, 15)
An unexpected post-Oscar role for Olivia Colman: as a snake-handling Pentecostal petrol station attendant in Appalachia, one of a sect oppressing a young woman (Alice Englert) in this slow-burning but luridly compelling indie.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
(BFI, 15)
An excellent reissue of John Schlesinger’s greatest film, a biting yet tender queer love triangle steeped in the contradictory sexual politics of early 1970s Britain, laden with extras including two early Schlesinger shorts.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
(Eureka, PG)
Finally available on Blu-ray, Sidney Lumet’s 1962 film of the Eugene O’Neill classic features Katharine Hepburn at her mightiest. It’s not Lumet’s most inspired film-making, but you won’t see a better-acted version on stage.
