LEGENDARY actor Max von Sydow laughs when I ask him about a report that he literally phoned in the year’s most emotionally devastating scene in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
“This isn’t exactly true,” says the still vigorous 53-year screen veteran who plays the elderly father of the movie’s protagonist, a French magazine editor who is almost totally paralyzed.
Von Sydow, best known for his 16 films with Ingmar Bergman, has just two scenes, but he makes such a vivid impression that there is talk of his second Oscar nomination (his first was for “Pelle the Conqueror” in 1987).
In his second scene in “Diving Bell,” von Sydow’s grief-stricken character is only heard, struggling to keep it together during a conversation with his stricken son (Mathieu Amalric).
“Two weeks before I was supposed to shoot my scenes, I was on vacation in the South of France when I got a call from [director] Julian Schnabel,” von Sydow recalls. “He said they were going to shoot the scene, and the actress in the scene [Marie-Josée Croze] needed to hear my voice. So he gave me a phone number to call. But what you hear in the movie, I recorded when my other scene was shot.”
Von Sydow talks about why he has enjoyed playing old men, his work with Bergman – the 6-foot-4 actor takes off his glasses and transfixes you with his deep blue eyes when the name is mentioned – and why he’d like to do more comedies:
Did you have any reluctance about playing a 92-year-old in “Diving Bell”? You’re 78, but you’ve been prominent for so long that some people might actually assume you’re that old.
I have played older men many times; I most enjoyed playing a character who aged from 20 to 75. I was 42 when I played Father Merrin, who’s my age now, in “The Exorcist” (1973), and it took Dick Smith 4½ hours every day to put on my makeup.
You’re the only actor who’s played both Jesus, in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), and Satan, in “Needful Things” (1993). Which was more fun?
It’s more fun to play the devil, you have more leeway. Playing Jesus was a very interesting experience – it was my first film outside Sweden, and it took nine months to make. But it’s an impossible part. Everyone has their own idea of Jesus, and you have to fight these fixed images. George Stevens was a very strong director who didn’t let me have my way very often.
Virtually every newspaper in the world ran that famous still of you as a knight playing chess with Death in “The Seventh Seal” (1957) when director Ingmar Bergman died this year. When you were making it, did you have any idea it would endure 50 years later as one of the great works of cinematic art?
We knew it was something special, but we had no idea it would reach outside the borders of Sweden. Ingmar had some international success with “Wild Strawberries,” but this was the film that let the world know that he was a very special and different kind of filmmaker. And it opened doors for me around the world. People always ask me which one of the films with Bergman is most important to me. I see them as one piece of work.
Why did you stop working together?
There was no particular reason. I should have played the bishop in “Fanny and Alexander” (1982), but my agents messed it up. I really regret not having done it. Bergman hated to travel, and I’ve lived in France for the past 30 years, but we kept in contact over the phone, right to the end.
Rick Moranis, with whom you appeared in “Strange Brew” (1983), once told me you were one of the funniest actors he’s worked with. But aside from that and “Hannah and Her Sis ters” (1986), you’ve done very few comedies.
Well, “Flash Gordon” (1980), where I played Ming the Merciless, was certainly in a campy tradition; I enjoyed doing that because I read the comic strip as a child. I’ve done lots of comedy in the theater, but movie producers don’t like to take risks. I would love to do more comedy.