The Swedish-born actor died at age 90 on Sunday, but his memory will live on in more than a hundred movies, including some of the most iconic roles in cinema history.
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. 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.
"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,."Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are the bad guys.'
But 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. With more than 150 credits to his name, including two Academy Award nominations , there's no way to easily sum up Max von Sydow. But here are five movies surveying the different phases in this remarkable actor's varied career.
The movie that defined von Sydow's English-language roles for decades, his portrayal as Father Merrin, a spiritual warrior against the demon Pazuzu, remains one of the most iconic in horror movie history. When an actress' daughter is possessed by a demon she's named Captain Howdy, modern medicine can't help her. With the disillusioned and doubting Father Damien Karras , von Sydow as Merrin launches a spiritual attack—an exorcism—on the entity, with deadly results.
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