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Bo Brundin, a Swedish actor who was best known for starring as a German war pilot opposite Robert Redford in “The Great Waldo Pepper” in 1975, died on Sept. 4 in his hometown of Uppsala, Sweden, Variety has confirmed. He was 85.

In “The Great Waldo Pepper,” Burdin played Ernst Kessler, a famous German pilot who is hired by film producers as a flying consultant. Toward the end of the film as Redford’s Waldo Pepper and Brundin’s Kessler are filming a wartime duel, the two begin actually dogfighting with sincerity and Kessler surrenders as the two salute each other and fly their separate ways. Brundin previously recalled the danger of filming those scenes because a stuntman had just crashed an hour before and suffered injuries to his forehead.

Elsewhere in his career, Burdin appeared in films such as “Around the World With Fanny Hill,” “Shoot the Sun Down” and “Raise the Titanic.

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Bo Brundin, the Swedish actor best known for his turn as a demoralized German World War I pilot opposite Robert Redford in the aerial adventure film The Great Waldo Pepper, has died. He was 85.

Brundin died Sunday in his hometown of Uppsala in Sweden, a spokesperson for Paar Productions told The Hollywood Reporter. The company worked with the actor on one of his last projects, the 2011 short film Starlight, in which he played God.

Brundin appeared in an early stage production of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal — his role would be taken by Max Von Sydow in the classic 1957 feature — and he had a small role as a political prisoner in The Day the Clown Cried (1972), the infamous never-released film from Jerry Lewis.

Brundin, who played lots of Germans and Russians during his career, also appeared on the big screen in the...

Kino resurrects an odd curio with Shoot the Sun Down, a counter-culture Western from 1978, notable for headlining Christopher Walken just prior to his Oscar win for The Deer Hunter and Margot Kidder before she was that year’s Lois Lane in Superman. Of further note, director David Leeds, who financed with his own production company, would never again lend his name to another film in any capacity. The film, which is obviously modeled after Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name series, considering it’s mysterious protagonist, has all the makings of a subversive genre entry, it’s stance on violence guided by an incredibly idiosyncratic score (that’s not Ennio Morricone) and Michael Chapman’s beautifully photographed landscapes (with plenty shots of rising/setting suns for its grand motif). However, muddled plotting and a comatosely constructed climax peg the film as rather forgettable, which is unfortunate considering its strange ambience.

Does The Great Waldo Pepper deserve to be called a classic? Released in 1975, the saga of post-wwi barnstorming aviators has long polarized critics. Some have hailed the film as a great but often underrated character study and portrait of life in 1920s America, while others have dismissed it as one of Robert Redford's lesser efforts, a lightweight action film that offers little more than amazing aerial stunts.

With this week's re-release of The Great Waldo Pepper on DVD, the debate continues. Once again, critics and film fans can argue whether the film is a true classic or just another old movie about airplanes.

The Great Waldo Pepper opens in 1926 Kansas, where the titular character (played by Redford at the height of his career) earns a meager living as a barnstorming pilot. Waldo spends his days flying from one tiny Kansas town to the next, performing aerobatic stunts and offering...