The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (432 page)

Max von Sydow
(Carl Adolf von Sydow), b. Lund, Sweden, 1929
Von Sydow is best known for some of the leading male roles in the work of Ingmar Bergman, which is to admit that Bergman takes rather less trouble with men than with women in his films. Even the artist figure that von Sydow has played three times allows Bergman to view himself (or to have others view him) without the participatory anguish that he has shared with his actresses. Von Sydow is dissected and found to be a sham. But in
Persona
, Liv Ullmann’s silent actress is a more profound portrait of Bergman’s impossible artist. Beside Ullmann, von Sydow looks gloomy, sickly, and irritable—intensely real, but shorn of the compassion that Bergman’s camera bestows on women and of the strength he sees in them.

Ever since his ascetic knight in
The Seventh Seal
(57), as stripped down and emblematic as a chess piece, von Sydow has been a passive dismembered representation of the male artistic personality. Suffering has found a home in that long face; but with his women—with Thulin, Andersson, Ullmann, and Lindblom—Bergman has gone painfully beneath that surface. Von Sydow was the magician Vogler in
The Face/The Magician
(58); the father in
The Virgin Spring
(59); Borg, the painter, in
Hour of the Wolf
(68); and the musician in
Shame
(68). In addition, he has worked for Bergman on
Wild Strawberries
(57), in a small part; as a husband in
So Close to Life
(58); as the husband in
Through a Glass Darkly
(61); in
Winter Light
(63);
A Passion
(70); and
The Touch
(71).

Not only eleven films but his major part in the three island films show how far his gaunt presence was relevant to Bergman’s view of modern man emaciated by the struggle between his appetite and guilt. He is especially striking in
Shame
, a film that subjects the artistic sensibility to the ordeal of a mysterious war, and shows that von Sydow’s musician is a selfish, cowardly man. Bespectacled, with receding hair, too dispirited to shave, the small inroads of aging are clearly signs of moral failure, evident in the opening scene where his chief emotional contact with Liv Ullmann is to ask her to look into his mouth for a swollen tooth.

Von Sydow was at the Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre from 1948 to 1951. In addition to his work for Bergman he played in these Swedish films, without settling into that Gothic revery that Bergman encourages:
Bara en Mor
(49, Alf Sjöberg);
Miss Julie
(51, Sjöberg);
Ingen Mans Kvinna
(53, Lars-Eric Kjellgren);
Ratten att Alska
(56, Mimi Pollack);
Prasten i Uddarbo
(58, Kenne Fant);
Brollopsdagen
(60, Fant);
Alskarinnan
(62, Vilgot Sjöman);
Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa
(62, Fant); in an episode from
4
×
4
(65, Jan Troell);
Made in Sweden
(68, Johan Bergenstrahle);
Svarta Palmkronor
(68, Lars Magnus Lindgren); as the husband in
Utvandrarna
(70, Troell);
Invandrarna
(70, Troell); and
Nybyggarna
(73, Troell).

Like most of the leading Swedes, he attracted American attention. It shows the inability of Hollywood to digest Bergman’s players that his English-speaking parts have ranged from Christ in
The Greatest Story Ever Told
(65, George Stevens) to the knuckle-cracking Nazi in
The Quiller Memorandum
(66, Michael Anderson). In addition:
The Reward
(65, Serge Bourguignon);
Hawaii
(66, George Roy Hill);
The Kremlin Letter
(69, John Huston);
The Night Visitor
(71, Laslo Benedek);
Embassy
(72, Gordon Hessler); as
The Exorcist
(73, William Friedkin); as
Steppenwolf
(74, Fred Haines); a wintry assassin in
Three Days of the Condor
(75, Sydney Pollack);
The Ultimate Warrior
(75, Robert Clouse);
Illustrious Corpses
(75, Francesco Rosi);
Egg! Egg?—A Hardboiled Story
(75, Hans Alfredson);
Cuore di Cane
(76, Alberto Lattuada);
Voyage of the Damned
(76, Stuart Rosenberg);
The Exorcist Part II: The Heretic
(77, John Boorman);
March or Die
(77, Dick Richards);
Brass Target
(78, John Hough); and
Hurricane
(79, Troell).

In the last fifteen years, he has roamed all over the world, seemingly unlimited in range, and never quite losing his authority:
Flash Gordon
(80, Mike Hodges);
Deathwatch
(80, Bertrand Tavernier);
She Dances Alone
(80, Robert Dornhelm);
Victory
(81, Huston);
Conan the Barbarian
(82, John Milius); flying a balloon to the North Pole in
The Flight of the Eagle
(82, Troell);
Strange Brew
(83, Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis); in the James Bond film
Never Say Never Again
(83, Irvin Kershner); as a Spanish police chief in
Target Eagle
(84, Jose Antonio de la Loma);
Dreamscape
(84, Joseph Ruben);
Samson and Delilah
(84, Lee Philips);
Dune
(84, David Lynch);
Kojak: The Belarus File
(85, Robert Markowitz);
Code Name Emerald
(85, Jonathan Sanger);
Il Pentito
(85, Pasquale Squitieri);
Quo Vadis?
(85, Franco Rossi);
Hannah and Her Sisters
(86, Woody Allen);
The Second Victory
(86, Gerald Thomas);
Duet for One
(86, Andrei Konchalovsky);
The Wolf at the Door
(87, Henning Carlsen); superb in
Pelle the Conqueror
(88, Bille August);
Red King, White Knight
(89, Geoff Murphy);
Mio Caro Dottor Graesler
(90, Roberto Faenza);
Awakenings
(90, Penny Marshall);
A Kiss Before Dying
(91, James Dearden);
Until the End of the World
(91, Wim Wenders); the narrator in
Europa
(91, Lars Von Trier), and the best thing in that mannered film;
The Best Intentions
(92, August); the Devil in
Needful Things
(93, Fraser Heston).

He has also directed a film,
Katinka
(88), adapted from a favorite novel by Herman Bang.

Meanwhile, passing seventy, he paces towards some destiny—to work with every registered director?:
Time Is Money
(94, Paolo Barzman);
Onkel Vanja
(94, Bjorn Melander);
Radetzky March
(94, Axel Corti);
Citizen X
(95, Chris Gerolmo);
Judge Dredd
(95, Danny Cannon);
Hamsun
(96, Troell);
Jerusalem
(96, August);
Enskilda Samtal
(96, Liv Ullmann);
Truck Stop
(96, Michael Muschner); a Russian admiral in
Hostile Waters
(97, David Drury);
La Principessa e il Povero
(97, Lamberto Bava); as David in
Solomon
(97, Roger Young);
What Dreams May Come
(98, Vincent Ward);
Snow Falling on Cedars
(99, Scott Hicks);
Nuremberg
(00, Yves Simoneau);
Non Ho Sonno
(01, Dario Argento);
Vercingétorix
(01, Jacques Dorfmann);
Intacto
(01, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo);
Minority Report
(02, Steven Spielberg);
Rush Hour 3
(07, Brett Ratner);
Emotional Arithmetic
(07, Paolo Barzman);
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(07, Julian Schnabel);
Shutter Island
(10, Martin Scorsese);
Robin Hood
(10, Ridley Scott).

Lars von Trier
, b. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1956
1981:
Nocturne
(s). 1982:
Befrielsesbilder/Pictures of a Liberation
(s). 1984:
Forbrydelsens Element/ The Element of Crime
. 1987:
Epidemic
. 1988:
Medea
. 1991:
Europa/Zentropa
. 1994:
Riget/The Kingdom
(TV). 1996:
Breaking the Waves
. 1997:
Riget II/The Kingdom II
(TV). 1998:
Idioterne
. 2000:
D-dag—Lise
(TV);
D-dag
(TV);
Dancer in
the Dark
. 2003:
Dogville;
“The Perfect Human: Avedøre, Denmark,” episode from
The Five Obstructions
. 2005:
Manderlay
. 2006:
The Boss of It All
. 2009:
Antichrist
.

“There is only one excuse for having to go through, and force others to go through, the hell that is the creative process of film,” wrote Lars von Trier in what, in 1991, was his third manifesto. “The carnal pleasure of that split second in the cinemas, when the projector and the loudspeakers, in unison, allow the illusion of sound and motion to burst forth, like an electron abandoning its orbit to generate light, and create the ultimate: a miraculous surge of life.”

We could note several things from this—that one man’s carnal ecstasy may be another’s imagination; that sometimes there are no excuses; and that the language of self-inducing cinematic exultation is oddly akin to the rhetoric of fascism.

On the strength of
The Element of Crime
and
Zentropa
, I would have to say von Trier is brilliant in a way that gives that term a bad name. He knows no reality—only film. His movies refer only to the accumulated culture of all those split seconds. Thus, it is natural that, in
Zentropa
, back projection begins to take over from any vestige of social or spatial reality.

He has wanton skills, a greedy eye, and a taste for lush morbidity that is easily regarded as “the heritage of film noir” but that may have more to do with personal and private dysfunction.
Zentropa
, especially, has amazing scenes and transformations—collapsing sets, streaks and stains of bloody color in gravure black-and-white imagery, and an unashamed merger of Kafka, Welles, Fuller, and engine grease. It all goes on and on—profane, deft, drop-dead stunning … and a terrible lesson in how hollow aesthetic virtuosity can be. Von Trier is like a seven-year-old serial killer whose weapons have all gone into his eye.

If this sounds like the description of a shameless opportunist, then marvel that his next move was to attach himself to a movement, known as Dogme, full of high-minded preaching about its own austerity and purity. On the principle that any recommended system of how to make films is the height of fraud, then von Trier added bogusness to his vulgarity. Much of the Dogme approach was worked out in
Riget
, a TV soap opera for Denmark that was painfully derived from David Lynch. However, the gross faults of
Breaking the Waves
and
Dancer in the Dark
(including my urge—restrained, restrained—to break the necks of Emily Watson and Björk) should be laid at von Trier’s feet alone. Whereupon, he would probably reinvent soccer.

His need to be outrageous and reviled led to
Antichrist
—and served to keep that interesting picture away from many of the heads that might have benefitted from it. Von Trier and Tarantino are rather similar talents, locked in isolation by this furious superiority.

W

Larry Wachowski
, b. Chicago, 1967
and
Andy Wachowski
, b. Chicago, 1965
1996:
Bound
. 1999:
The Matrix
. 2003:
The Matrix Reloaded; The Matrix Revolutions
. 2008:
Speed Racer
.

Bound
was a very nice, naughty little film, it was
Detour
made with real money by authentic perverts and a lot of style (note: Larry Wachowski was supposedly once married to a dominatrix). The rapport between Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon was bursting; the plot contortions were from real sidewinder genes; the camera prowled through clammy space like a finger in a private place; and Joe Pantoliano knew it was now or never.

Alas, the brothers got class, Joel Silver, and a whole lot of dumb philosophy, all of which went under the long black coats called
The Matrix
. Yes, the first one was stylish; it was maybe the best use of Keanu Reeves the movies had ever found; and it had fights that came from days and nights in amusement arcades. It would have been all very well if it didn’t have to mean anything, especially anything that people could write doctoral theses on. Those theses wanted a blow-job from Jennifer Tilly.

Of course, the film was a monstrous success, and so was part two (for a weekend), until the kids realized that it was the same old junk all over again. Part three (only a few months later) tottered into triple digits but the game was over. The idea of the Matrix was shot, the shiny black coats were ready to be garbage bags, Carrie Moss was dead after just seeming bored, and the Wachowski brothers might as well start looking for a new Gina Gershon. Meanwhile, their idiot fans may brood on the clear warning—that long before all this, the brothers had already written
Assassins
(95, Richard Donner), a film that never bothered to deny its status as pretentious junk or dislodge the smirk from Sylvester Stallone’s cast-plastic face. How about
Antony and Cleopatra
with Tilly and Sly?

Andrew Wagner
, b.?
2004:
The Talent Given Us
. 2007:
Starting Out in the Evening
.

I haven’t seen
The Talent Given Us
, or any of the several shorts Wagner has made in his time at Brown and as a directing fellow at the American Film Institute. That’s a way of saying that it has always been possible to get into this book on the strength of one film. In the first edition, that’s how Terrence Malick got there, along with many other directors (for example, if Nicholas Ray’s
They Live by Night
simply stood as the only film made by a guy who died in 1950 in a highway accident, wouldn’t it be there?). Wagner (the nephew of Mark Rydell, I believe) is here because of
Starting Out in the Evening
. Except that
Starting Out
can be, may be, two films.