He was the biggest . That's how you always say when someone's celeb player dies, but Max von Sydow was really the greatest.
A great actor and man, with tremendous integrity and erection. There was an aura of respect around him. A man who carved granite.
At the same time with the ability to dress in any role, in any fiction. From Bergman to Blixt Gordon. Then a chameleon, with integrity, then.
He has made so many great efforts, but if it is to be washed out three iconic roles it must be:
The surly artist Frederick in one of Woody Allen's foremost dramas, Hannah and her sisters. It is he who, with unbelievably dry timing, squeezes out one of Allen's best replicas: "If Jesus came back and saw what is being done in his name, he could never stop spewing."
Karl Oskar in the Emigrants, where Max von Sydow, with his enormous presence, carries - and illustrates - whole old poor Sweden on his curved shoulders.
And so, of course, the knight Antonius Block in the Seventh Seal. He who plays chess with Death at Hov's halls. Death should pick him up and ask, "Are you ready?" Antonius replies (in perhaps the most debated fallacy of film history): "My body is afraid, not myself".
Death eventually won.