#pelle the conqueror

[theoscarsproject]

Pelle the Conqueror (1987). When his wife dies, Lasse takes his 12-year-old son, Pelle, from their home in Sweden to Denmark in search of a better life.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I put this on - the name certainly carries certain connotations after all - but the haunting, harrowing story of a father and son who become indentured servants in Denmark while fleeing poverty in Sweden certainly wasn't it. What a moving film, and what a staggering pair of performances from Pelle Hvenegaard and Max von Sydow. This isn't always an easy watch, but it's an exceptionally well-made film that doesn't so much dwell on the darkness but rather explores how darkness can be shared, the load lightened and a path through it found. Really great film. 8/10.

[inbestigator]

Pelle the Conqueror

[movietitleinferno]

Pelle the Conqueror - 1987

[shiningwizard]

Pixote (Héctor Babenco, 1980)

A lot rawer than i was expecting. I'm not sure what i was expecting. I think i'd always confused this and Pelle the Conqueror. Lord let me not be a Sao Paulo street kid in 1980. Let me be from means and a supportive family and allow me to weasel my way into Sepultura. Dedicatedly harsh but that's tonally offset with playfulness and heightened operatic moments, as though retreating. But all of a piece. To its benefit it's not merely Pixote's movie, expanding to a whole cast of these boys, more interesting and less basely sympathetic than young master title character. And as horrific and despairing as this is, it looked like a blast for these kids to make.

[who-vian01]

Bille August to Direct Mediawan Series 'The Count of Monte Cristo'

Nah guys! I'm so excited for this!! The moment these two italian beauties land on international screens it is OVER for everyone!!

(Lino Guanciale on the left and Michele Riondino on the right)

[spotlight-report]

"The Promised Land" Movie Review

The Promised Land (“Bastarden” in the original Danish) is a romantic period piece directed by Nikolaj Arcel that recalls sweeping epics like Rob Roy and Pelle the Conqueror. Retired army captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) appeals to the king of Denmark to be allowed to farm on the Jutland Heath, a wild coastal territory that has resisted cultivation thus far despite the King’s best efforts.…

[bm2ab]

Arrivals & Departures . 10 April 1929 – 08 March 2020 . Carl Adolf von Sydow . Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow  (born Carl Adolf von Sydow; ) was a Swedish actor who lived in France for the last 20 years of his life and became a French citizen in 2002. He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages. Capable in roles ranging from stolid, contemplative protagonists to sardonic artists and menacing, often gleeful villains, von Sydow received numerous accolades including honors from the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. He was nominated for two Academy Awards: for Best Actor for Pelle the Conqueror (1987) and for Best Supporting Actor for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011).

Von Sydow was first noticed internationally for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess. He appeared in eleven films directed by Bergman, including Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Shame (1968), and The Touch (1971).

Von Sydow made his American film debut as Jesus Christ in the Biblical epic film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and went on to star in films such as Hawaii (1966), The Exorcist (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and the James Bond adaptation Never Say Never Again (1983). He also appeared in supporting roles in Dune (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990), Minority Report (2002), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Shutter Island (2010), Robin Hood (2010), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He portrayed the main antagonist Leland Gaunt (The Devil) in the film adaptation of Stephen King's Needful Things (1993). In 2016, he portrayed the Three-eyed Raven in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Von Sydow received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, was made a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2005, and was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 17 October 2012.

[dragon-age-codex-entries]

Codex entry: Par Vollen: The Occupied North

"In the 30th year of the Steel Age, the first Qunari ships were sighted off the coast of Par Vollen in the far north, marking the beginning of a new age of warfare.

History calls this the First Qunari War, but it was mostly a one-sided bloodbath, with the Qunari advancing far into the mainland. Qunari warriors in glittering steel armor carved through armies with ease. Their cannons, the likes of which our ancestors had never seen, reduced city walls to rubble in a matter of seconds.

Stories of Qunari occupation vary greatly. It is said they dismantled families and sent captives to "learning camps" for indoctrination into their religion. Those who refused to cooperate disappeared to mines or construction camps.

For every tale of suffering, however, there is another of enlightenment deriving from something called the "Qun." This is either a philosophical code or a written text that governs all aspects of Qunari life, perhaps both. One converted Seheran reported pity for those who refused to embrace the Qun, as if the conquerors had led him to a sort of self-discovery. "For all my life, I followed the Maker wherever his path led me," he wrote, "but in the Qun I have found the means to travel my own path."

It has been said that the most complete way to wipe out a people is not with blades but with books. Thankfully, a world that had repelled four Blights would not easily bow to a foreign aggressor. And so the Exalted Marches began.

The greatest advantage of the Chantry-led forces was the Circle of Magi. For all their technology, the Qunari appeared to harbor great hatred for magic. Faced with cannons, the Chantry responded with lightning and balls of fire.

The Qunari armies lacked the sheer numbers of humanity. So many were slain at Marnas Pell, on both sides, that the Veil is said to be permanently sundered, the ruins still plagued by restless corpses. But each year, the Chantry pushed further and further into the Qunari lines, although local converts to the Qun proved difficult to return to Andraste's teachings.

By the end of the Storm Age, the Qunari were truly pushed back. Rivain was the only human land that retained the Qunari religion after being freed, and its rulers attempted to barter a peace. Most human lands signed the Llomerryn Accord, excepting the Tevinter Imperium. It is a shaky peace that has lasted to this day."

—From The Exalted Marches: An Examination of Chantry Warfare, by Sister Petrine, Chantry scholar

[cerescereso]

[biokam]

Max von Sydow and Pelle Hvenegaard in Pelle the Conqueror (Billie August, 1987)

[dweemeister]

I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency.

Born Carl Adolf von Sydow, Swedish actor Max von Sydow passed away yesterday at his home in southern France. With a career spanning eight decades, the towering and lanky von Sydow distinguished himself in Hollywood, usually seen playing villains through the 1970s and ‘80s. But he was perhaps most widely acclaimed for his work in Swedish films with directors Ingmar Bergman and Jan Troell – the former, shortly before his death in 2007, described the actor thusly: “Max, you have been the first and the best Stradivarius that I have ever had in my hands.” The role that catapulted von Sydow to international fame was as Antonius Block, a returning Crusader who plays chess with Death (often parodied and referenced), in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. In recent years, von Sydow described himself as an actor without a home nation, in due part due to his globetrotting film career and his sons attending American universities. 

An actor of incredible gravitas and often embodying existential angst and resolve simultaneously, von Sydow fulfilled a lifelong passion that began when he saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a schoolboy in his hometown of Lund. Younger viewers and gamers may know him best as Three-eyed Raven from Game of Thrones and the voice actor of Esbern in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, respectively. In life, one of the greatest screen actors of the last century touched audiences in countless ways that few non-Americans and non-British actors could, no matter the project.

Nine of the films Max von Sydow appeared in are shown above, and are listed below (left-right, descending):

The Virgin Spring (1960, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, and Birgitta Pettersson

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – directed by George Stevens; also starring Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, José Ferrer, and Telly Savalas

Hour of the Wolf (1968, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Liv Ullmann, Gertrud Fridh, Georg Rydeberg, Erland Josephson, and Ingrid Thulin

The Emigrants (1971, Sweden) – directed by Jan Troell; also starring Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, and Monica Zetterlund

The Exorcist (1973) – directed by William Friedkin; also starring Ellen Burstyn, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, and Linda Blair

Pelle the Conqueror (1987, Denmark/Sweden) – directed by Bille August; also starring Pelle Hvenegaard, Erik Paaske, and Bjørn Granath

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, France) – directed by Julian Schnabel; also starring Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, and Anne Consigny

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) – directed by J.J. Abrams; also starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac

The Seventh Seal (1957, Sweden) – directed by Ingmar Bergman; also starring Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Bibi Andersson, Inga Landgré, and Åke Fridell

[tribeca]

"Do it, do it, do it. And watch good actors. See what they are doing and how they are doing it. You have to practically participate, I think, in order to develop yourself."

Happy 90th birthday to the magnificent Max von Sydow, an acting titan and one of the greatest stars to ever illuminate the screen!

[pigballoon]

[i12bent]

Bille August is a Danish film director - he turns 71 today. His best-known film is Pelle the Conqueror which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar and the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1988...

August is ‘famous’ in Denmark for having 8 kids with 5 different women. Here he is with Masja Dessau with whom he has a son, Adam. 7 of the 8 kids have names that start with the letter ‘A’...