The Seventh Seal (1957)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
The Magician (1958)
The Virgin Spring (1960)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Winter Light (1963)
Shame (1968)
The Passion of Anna (1969)
The Emigrants (1971)
The New Land (1972)
The Exorcist (1973)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Europa (1991)*
Shutter Isand (2010)
*Narrator
That's 15 films and in most he was in a starring role. Of course he benefited greatly from having started his career being a regular in Ingmar Bergman's films, but one could argue that his performances were part of what helped make Bergman films so special. The Seventh Seal is generally regarded as one of the greatest films of all time and von Sydow gives a towering performance that demonstrated his acting depth and presaged his brilliant career. Despite regularly appearing in Bergman films, he was not typecast. A knight in one film, a suicidal young husband in another, a magician, a doctor, a farmer, a priest, a spy, a doctor, an artist. Acerbic and angry in one film, weak and fallible in another.
Von Sydow had that rich, low voice (listen to his haunting narration in Europa) and was tall in way that he could gangly and awkward or bold and dangerous. Of course his face was cinematic. Handsome in a classical art sort of way.
My favorite performances of his...well, I've painted myself into a corner here for picking one or two or even just three seems impossible. But I'll go ahead and say his breakthrough role as the ill-fated knight in The Seventh Seal is one of them but I also admired his work in Shame as the weak ex violinist trying to navigate his war-torn homeland. He was also brilliant as the angry and isolated artist Frederick in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters.
We often say of departed heroes that "they don't make 'em like him anymore." I sure as hell don't see another Von Sydow waiting in the wings. A generational talent.
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