Trained as an actor at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre School, Max von Sydow became recognized as Sweden's foremost film star for his long-running collaboration with director Ingmar Bergman. Beginning with his ascetic knight in "The Seventh Seal" (1957), he seemed to represent the suffering artistic personality, his gaunt presence embodying modern man's struggle between appetite and guilt. Bergman, seeing strength in his women, depicted them with compassion but allowed von Sydow's steely-blue, haunted stare and sickly, hollow cheeks to tell the torment of men's angst-ridden souls. The