The older Von Sydow

Last night I watched Shutter Island for the second time on Blu-ray. It is worth watching twice for reasons that you will work out after you’ve watched it the first time.

One aspect of it had me puzzled. German actor Max von Sydow appears as an aged psychiatrist, but he actually looks no older than he did 37 years ago as a priest in The Exorcist (see picture to right).

You may recall, he seems very frail in that movie, which is necessary for the plot.

So I looked him up on IMDB, and found that he was only about 44 when the older movie was shot. All these years I had assumed that he was an old man back in 1973.

Turns out that his appearance was in fact achieved by masterful makeup, and I’d say masterful acting.

I wonder whether, when Warner Bros gets around to releasing The Exorcist on Blu-ray, if it will go with the original or ”The Version You’ve Never Seen’. Ideally it would use seamless branching to pack both versions on the disc, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it does things.