Max von Sydow died last month at the age of
90. The BBC tribute to him showed him as he appeared in several major
productions over the course of a long and distinguished acting career,
including the 1973 film ‘The Exorcist’ in which he played the role of a Jesuit
priest brought in to cast a demon out of a young possessed girl.
That clip of a few seconds brought back some memories. I was an avid movie-goer as a young guy but grew out of the habit by my mid-20s – the last time I went to the flics was in 1982 when I took a bunch of students to Jackson’s Drive-In Theatre in Port Moresby. However, there were films that stayed with me and that I caught up with when I discovered internet websites that run old movies a few years ago. I had truly outgrown the fantasy world of the silver screen and did not bother seeing most of them through. ‘The Exorcist’ was one of two exceptions (the other being ‘The Wicker Man’ of the same year), which I first saw – cut and dubbed – in Auckland in 1974.
