Max Von Sydow RIP

The great Max Von Sydow, who died this week at age 90: “I wish I could have a wider choice of roles in American productions, the kind of roles I get in Europe. Unfortunately, American film producers only offer you exact copies of roles you successfully performed before.”

I don't know what the first movie was that I saw him in. Either Three Days of the Condor on HBO when I was thirteen or The Seventh Seal on public television which was showing movies from the Criterion Collection every day at one PM. I'd watch them each day over the summer, but I don't remember when I started that. I remember thinking that his crew cut was a more plausible medieval hairstyle than the hippie-length hair they had in most movies in the '70's that were set in that era.

But how old was I when I saw the Exorcist? I remember lying in my bunk bed. It was kind of a flimsy metal bed bought at a garage sale somewhere. And it was shaking slightly which made me think of Linda Blair on her demon-possessed bed. I lay there motionless so Satan would think I was asleep. I finally got up. The cat was on the top bunk cleaning herself and that was enough to make the bed shake ever so slightly.

Unless I was an even dumber teenager than I remember, that had to have been when I was a preteen, but I couldn't have seen that movie at that stage without being traumatized. Maybe I just saw something about the making of The Exorcist.

Max Von Sydow died on March 8th at age 90.