The acclaimed late actor Max von Sydow (1929-2020) is perhaps still best-known to English-speaking audiences for his roles in The Exorcist (1973) and as the sci-fi villain Ming the Merciless in the hugely entertaining Flash Gordon (1980) (alongside a pre-Bond Timothy Dalton and former FYEO actor Chaim Topol). But, for Bond fans in particular, the Swedish actor is also remembered for his role as a kind of ‘alernative’ Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Kevin McClory’s unofficial non-Eon 007 movie Never Say Never Again (1983), which saw the return of Sean Connery to the legendary role of James Bond, a role he had sworn he would never play again (hence the ironic title).
In both Europe and the USA, von Sydow had a highly distinguished 70-year career in a variety of films (he was in over 150 movies) and, at one point, was also nominated for an Oscar. He will also be remembered for his role as a medieval Knight in The Seventh Seal (1957), which left us with one of the most haunting B/W images in post-war cinema, when he played a game of chess with the personification of Death. When the late Sean Connery finally agreed to return as 007 for the ‘rogue’ unofficial movie that Kevin McClory had been planning for years, the Scottish star was determined to have a big say in the casting of the main actors for the film, and was keen to have some heavyweight stars who would add some acting gravitas to the story. Max von Sydow was high on his list.
Interestingly, though – in a sense – it was not von Sydow’s first brush with the world of Bond. Some fans may be less aware that von Sydow once turned down the role of Dr. Julius No for the very first James Bond movie with Sean Connery. It was not something von Sydow mentioned too often in interviews, but he did occasionally address what he perhaps later saw as a lost opportunity. For example, speaking in an interview he once gave to the Moviefone film site back in 2011, he admitted: ‘I was offered Dr. No, yes. And I turned it down!’ He continued: ‘Do I regret it? No, I don’t. Well, of course, I didn’t know what was going to happen in the future. But, then, after many years, I was offered to be in Never Say Never Again‘. When he was asked whether there was any pressure on him n5t to participate in what was, after all, a renegade Bond movie, von Sydow explained: ‘No. Not really. But there were problems like, “What can we do?” and “What can we not do? What are we allowed to do? What is legally correct to do?” But this thing came out and it was not a bad film’.
Limited Rights
Max von Sydow’s comments on the problems the production faced capture the situation well. Kevin McClory (1924-2006) had found that his right to remake Thunderball, despite his ambitions to make his new Bond movie (which he christened Warhead) a kind of spectacular ‘Star Wars underwater’, were in fact very limited, and his legal ‘rights’ were very much confined to sticking to the basics of the Thunderball storyline and the use of only a few key characters. Instead of having the luxury of the epic Warhead script (penned by Connery and spy author Len Deighton), the American director of NSNA, Irvin Kershner (1923-2010), had to stick very closely to a straightforward Thunderball adaptation.
Kershner said he thus felt he was ‘in a vice a lot of the time’, and there was constant legal pressure not to stray too far from the limited rights McClory had been granted. This led to considerable frustration at times. There were also questions about what tone to adopt – should it be a straightforward thriller, or have a more light-hearted approach? The final movie tried to combine the two, but seemed unsure of itself. Moreover, McClory, in order to get the movie finally made, had had to do a deal with Hollywood lawyer and producer Jack Schwartzman, who ran the production company Taliafilm.
This meant that McClory lost creative control, and had to accept Schwartzman’s insistance that NSNA could only be a straight Thunderball remake, but adapted to the technology, computers and military hardware of the 1980s.
Die Another Way
All this had implications for how Max von Sydow could interpret the character of Blofeld, and the actor also found that the script was often being subjected to last-minute re-writes as the production went on. In an early version of the script, Blofeld was given a much larger role in the story, but in the final edit von Sydow appeared in only a few scenes and his Blofeld did not make that much of an impression on audiences. He also seemed to come across as a bemused Uncle rather than the menacing villain that Blofeld should really have been. This was a pity, and von Sydow hinted over the years that he would have like much more development of his version of the SPECTRE head and more guidance from Kershner. But it was not to be. In the end, the problems on NSNA and tensions on set led even Connery to become very disappointed with what emerged. Audiences were also denied the chance to see Blofeld appear to die. Blofeld’s famous white cat was to have deadly poisonous claws, and one version of the NSNA script was to have had Blofeld, near the end of the movie, suddenly be so surprised to see on a screen that Bond was still alive that he jumps up and gets scratched by his own startled poisonous cat! Alas, it was not filmed.
Nevertheless, von Sydow still deserves to be seen as a worthy version of Blofeld, and can arguably take his place in the pantheon of Blofelds who have challenged James Bond over the years, a Fleming-created villain who is a kind of Moriarty for the modern age.
Did You Know?
The actor Robert Rietty (1923-2015) made a rare appearance on screen in NSNA, playing a dipomat who is very alarmed at Blofeld’s blackmail attempt. Best known for his post-production voice-dubbing work on various Bond films, including Largo in Thunderball (1965) and Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice (1967), Rietty is the voice of (the un-named) Blofeld in the pre-credits to For Your Eyes Only (1981).
Max von Sydow’s Blofeld speaks to his skull-shaped screen camera.