Maximilian Schell Movies
Maximilian Schell may not be a household name, but he is internationally respected, particularly in Europe, as an award-winning actor/director of stage and screen. He was born in Vienna, Austria, on December 8, 1930, but raised in Switzerland after his parents, Swiss author/poet Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian actress Margarethe Noe von Nordberg, fled there to escape the effects of Nazi Germany's forcible annexation of Austria in 1938. As a young man, Schell studied at three universities -- Zurich, Basel, and Munich -- before making his professional stage debut in 1952. In 1955, he appeared in his first film, Kinder, Mütter und ein General. He next debuted on Broadway and then in Hollywood, playing a German officer who befriends fellow soldier Marlon Brando in The Young Lions (1958).Schell earned an Oscar in 1961 for his intriguing performance as a defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg, and would subsequently be nominated for Oscars for his work in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and Julia (1977). In 1968, he produced Das Schloss (The Castle) and made his feature film directorial/screenwriting debut with Erste Liebe (First Love) in 1970. The latter film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, as did his 1973 effort Der Fussgänger. The latter also won him a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. As a director and producer, Schell distinguished himself on the international stage with productions such as the remarkable Tales From the Vienna Woods and the modern opera Coronet. In addition to film and stage work, he has occasionally worked on television, winning a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Lenin in the HBO miniseries Stalin (1992) and additional acclaim for his work in Peter the Great (1986) and Joan of Arc (1999).
Since the late '80s, Schell's screen appearances became sporadic, and he rarely branched out from acting. Notable films from the '90s included a rare comic role opposite Marlon Brando in The Freshman (1990), a dramatic turn as a stern patriarch in screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' autobiographical Telling Lies in America (1997), Tea Leoni's father in Deep Impact (1998), and a cardinal in John Carpenter's Vampires (1998). When not busying himself on stage, screen, and television, he has distinguished himself as a concert pianist and conductor. He has performed with Claudio Abado, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, and Leonard Bernstein. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1970
- R
Producer/director Maximillian Schell adapted the screenplay of First Love from a story by Ivan Turgenev. John Moulder Brown plays Alexander, a 16-year-old boy who falls in love with 21-year-old Sinaida (Dominique Sanda). Despite a great deal of emotional turmoil, exacerbated by the fact that Sinaida has been sleeping with Alexander's father, Alexander insists upon pursuing the relationship. His sexual coming-of-age is played out against the ominous backdrop of pre-World War II Europe. The film was originally released as Ein Leibe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Moulder-Brown, Dominique Sanda, (more)
Volcano is the reissue title of the muddled disaster flick Krakatoa: East of Java. The name change was reportedly put into effect after thousands of filmgoers noted publicly that Krakatoa is west of Java. As might be expected, the story takes place in 1883, when the long-dormant volcano at Krakatoa erupted with A-bomb force. Since everyone knows what's coming, the filmmakers try to stir up suspense with a gratuitous subplot involving ship's-captain Maximilian Schell and his mutinous crew (a similar plot device had been used in a previous dramatization of the Krakatoa incident, 1953's Fair Wind to Java). The climactic special effects are spectacular enough to make the script, and the all-star cast (including Diane Baker, Brian Keith, Rossano Brazzi, and Sal Mineo), seem utterly superfluous. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Diane Baker, (more)
- 1969
The life of the great Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar is given class-A treatment in this international produced historical epic. The film is set between 1817 and 1823, a time when Venezuelan rebels were waging a war of independence against the Spanish colonial government. Bolivar works tirelessly to unite the separate racial and religious Venezuelan factions to form a strong united front against the Spanish. But his personal vision goes beyond his homeland: Bolivar hopes to eventually liberate all of the Americas from the Spanish yoke. Francisco Rabal stars as Bolivar, while other roles are filled by the likes of Maximillian Schell and Rosanna Schiaffano. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1969
Simon Bolivar is the true-life story of the leader of the 1817 Venezuelan revolution. Maximilian Schell stars as the title character. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- 1968
The Castle (Das Schloss) is as good an adaptation of the inscrutable Franz Kafka as any. Maximillian Schell plays Kafka's ubiquitous protagonist "K", a surveyor who is hired by the residents of a remote castle. Once he arrives within the domain of the castle's owners, K finds there is no work for him. His efforts to contact those inside the castle are thwarted by the mysteriously obstructive villagers. In keeping with the fact that the novel was unfinished, the film has been released with two different endings: non-adherents of Kafka might argue that it could use two different beginnings and middles as well. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Cordula Trantow, (more)
- 1968
In this drama, two Polish brothers escape from a Russian labor camp and try to join the exiled Polish Army in Afghanistan. While awaiting the man who will sneak them over the border, they rent a room. There, one of them falls in love with the landlord's wife, and the other for a local waitress. The Russian secret police are everywhere around them, so every action is taken with great anxiety. The pressure of waiting mounts as the days stretch on. One of the brothers was injured in labor camp and is rapidly losing his vision. The other is struck down by typhoid on the day they are to leave. He must immediately have adrenaline or he will die and so begs the landlord to get it for him. While the landlord is gone, the almost-blind brother makes love to the landlord's wife, and afterwards the guilt-filled wife attempts suicide but is saved by the ailing brother. The landlord returns, and the brothers attempt their escape. The landlord, his wife, the smuggler, and his family go too, but, unfortunately, they are spotted at the border. The brother with typhoid makes one final sacrifice to assure the safety of the others. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Raf Vallone, (more)
Made-for-television adaptation of Johanna Spyri's classic children's tale about an orphaned girl who goes to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Jean Simmons, (more)
- 1967
John LeCarre's Call for the Dead was the basis for this gloomy, complex spy story. James Mason plays a British secret agent puzzled by the sudden suicide of Foreign Office higher-up Robert Flemyng. Mason had worked on Flemyng's security clearance himself, and can't fathom what personality quirk he might have missed. The agent suspects that the dead man's wife (Simone Signoret), a concentration camp survivor, may hold the answer to Flemyng's despair, but the Foreign Office wants Mason to drop the case. Mason hires retiring Inspector Harry Andrews to do some private detective work. What Mason and Andrews find out is more insidious than they've imagined; worse, Mason is saddled with a new dilemma--his wife (Harriet Andersson) has been unfaithful with a colleague (Maximillian Schell). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Mason, Simone Signoret, (more)
- 1967
The beauty of classical music confronts the ugliness and treachery of war in this unusual drama. Lionel Evans (Charlton Heston) is the director of a well-respected symphony orchestra touring European concert halls in 1944. In the midst of one concert, the city where they are playing is attacked by German troops, and as Evans and his musicians try to escape, they are captured by Nazi soldiers led by Col. Arndt (Anton Diffring). Evans and the orchestra are taken to a castle where they are to bide their time before being executed; but it turns out that Arndt's superior, Gen. Schiller (Maximilian Schell), is a classical music buff. Schiller commands Evans and his symphony to prepare a special concert for the Nazis, but Evans realizes that the moment the concert is over, he and his musicians will be killed. The orchestra's performances, which include works by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and Schubert, were performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston, Maximilian Schell, (more)
- 1965
Ingrid Thulin plays a Polish inmate of the Dachau concentration camp who is liberated at the end of the war. Presumed dead, Ingrid returns to visit her husband (Maximillian Schell) She finds that his grief was fleeting at best; his new mistress is his "deceased" wife's daughter (Samantha Eggar) from a previous marriage. Since Ingrid's identity is masked by plastic surgery, she subtly re-enters their life without undue stress for either husband or daughter. But when the husband figures out the ruse, he murders his young paramour in the bathtub (a moment lavishly exploited in the print ads for this film) and plots to kill Ingrid for her money. A textbook case of implausibility, Return from the Ashes was adapted from an equally unbelievable novel by Hubert Monteilhet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Samantha Eggar, (more)
After years of enduring movie lampoons of his 1955 crime-caper classic Rififi, director Jules Dassin topped them all with his own spoof, Topkapi. It's a rather disreputable crew that teams for the elaborate jewel theft masterminded by Maximillian Schell. Sexy Melina Mercouri (Mrs. Dassin) is probably the best of the batch: the others are faffling Robert Morley, unreliable Gilles Segal and Jess Hahn. Bumbling Peter Ustinov (who won an Oscar for his performance) is duped into helping the thieves, and soon finds himself uneasily straddling both sides of the law. As in Rififi, the theft itself (taking place in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace museum) is played out in near-complete silence. We won't tell you how the crooks are foiled; just be advised that money flies out the door when something else flies in the window. Topkapi was based on The Light of Day, a somewhat more somber novel by Eric Ambler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, (more)
- 1963
A Belgian girl, accused of stealing weapons, looks for protection in a cabaret and is helped by a German soldier in this World War I drama. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1963
Vittorio De Sica's version of a play by Jean-Paul Sartre stars Frederic March as Albrecht von Gerlach, the owner of one of Germany's biggest industrial firms. Albrecht calls for his son Werner (Robert Wagner), a lawyer who is married to an actress, Johanna (Sophia Loren). The aging Albrecht wants Werner to take over the family business, but Werner is not interested, as he knows that the company helped to build the Nazi war machine that caused the deaths of millions of people. Werner, however, was not first in the line of succession; his older brother Franz (Maximilian Schell) was running the company for his father during the war, and as a result he was cited for war crimes and executed. Or so everyone believes. In fact, Franz was able to escape the gallows, and he lives in the basement of the family's Altona estate, watched over by his sister Leni (Francoise Prevost). Franz has gone mad, and he believes Leni when she tells him that Germany never recovered from its defeat in the war and that poverty has layed waste to the nation. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophia Loren, Maximilian Schell, (more)
- 1962
A distinguished cast highlights this film adaptation of a stage drama by Peter Shaffer. Stanley Harrington (Jack Hawkins) is a self-made businessman incapable of expressing his emotions or compromising with others; his wife Louise (Rosalind Russell) imagines herself an intellectual, though her intelligence is more of an affectation than a reality. Stanley and Louise hire Walter (Maximilian Schell), a teacher from Germany, as a tutor for their two teenage children, effeminate Philip (Richard Beymer) and high-strung Pamela (Annette Gorman). Walter tries to ingratiate himself with the family, with little success; when he tries to get to know Louise better, she imagines that he's fallen in love with her, and she's deeply hurt when he confesses that he instead sees her as a motherly figure. Walter is eventually driven to the brink of suicide, which forces the family to reconsider their attitudes toward Walter and each other. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosalind Russell, Jack Hawkins, (more)
- 1962
Directed by Edward Dmytryk, The Reluctant Saint is based on the life of Saint Joseph of Cupertino. When young Giuseppe Diesa (Maximilian Schell) is sent to work at a monastery circa 17th century Italy -- his parents believed he was mentally challenged -- he surprises a local bishop by his incredible relationship with the monastery's animals. Believing this merits a traditional religious education, he is taken in and taught to pray, with miraculous results. His spiritual energy apparently allows him to levitate, which impressed many, and terrified others. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Ricardo Montalban, (more)
After the end of World War II, the world gradually became aware of the full extent of the war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity. However, by that time most of the major figures of the Nazi regime were either dead or long missing, and in the resulting legal proceedings American judges often found themselves confronting the question of how much responsibility someone held who had "just followed orders." Judgment at Nuremberg is a dramatized version of the proceedings at one of these trials, in which Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) is overseeing the trials of four German judges -- most notably Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer) -- accused of knowingly sentencing innocent men to death in collusion with the Nazis. Representing the defense is attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), while prosecuting the accused is U.S. Col. Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark). As the trial goes on, both the visiting Americans and their reluctant German hosts often find themselves facing the legacy of the war, and how both of their nations have been irrevocably changed by it. Judgment at Nuremberg also features notable supporting performances by Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift. Originally written and produced as a play for television, the screen version of Judgment at Nuremberg was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, with Maximilian Schell and Abby Mann taking home Oscars for (respectively) Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, (more)
- 1960
This entry at the 1962 San Francisco Film Festival came from a 1960 German television production. Produced by American Edward Dmytryk, Hamlet was redubbed in English when the director convinced Maximillian Schell the results would insure a wider audience for the film. Both English and German versions were shown in succession at the Festival. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Hans Caninberg, (more)
Though several concessions to the censors and the box-office were made in adapting Irwin Shaw's bestseller The Young Lions to the screen, the end result is generally effective and satisfying. Set during World War 2, the film concentrates on three individuals, one German, two American. Marlon Brando plays an idealistic German whose early fascination with Nazism leads to doubt and disillusionment. American entertainer Dean Martin, on the verge of the Big Time, does his best to dodge the draft but ends up in uniform all the same. And American Jew Montgomery Clift, so sensitive that he's practically breakable, must come to grips with anti-Semitism, not only from the Germans but also from his fellow soldiers. Romance enters the picture in the form of Hope Lange as Clift's gentile girlfrind, Barbara Rush as the socialite who shames Martin into joining up, and May Britt as Brando's vis-a-vis. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt was obliged to shoehorn in a boot-camp sequence indicating that the Brass disapproved of the bigoted behavior of Clift's topkick Lee van Cleef (as if racism was a mere aberration during the 1940s), and to "slightly" alter the ending of the book, in which the embittered but still patriotic Brando character, shouting "Welcome to Germany!," machine-guns the Martin and Clift characters (in the film, it is Brando who bites the dust, symbolically dying for Hitler's sins). Maximillian Schell offers a starmaking turn as Brando's cynical comrade, while an uncredited John Banner, "Sergeant Schultz" on Hogan's Heroes, shows up as a pompous burgomeister who feigns ignorance of the hellish concentration camp in his community. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, (more)
- 1957
Taxichauffeur Baenz was part of a cycle of "blue collar" comedies popular in Switzerland in the late 1950s. The title character is played by Schaggi Streuli, who like director Werner Duegglin was a newcomer to films. Working day and night, cabdriver Streuli struggles to make ends meet for his family, and to finance his daughter's medical-school education. Alas, the girl's boyfriend is an embezzler who seriously depletes the family's monetary supply. The no-good fiancé is played by Maximillian Schell, then on the verge of international stardom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elisabeth Müller, Maximilian Schell, (more)
- 1955
Laslo Benedek interrupted his thriving Hollywood career to return to Europe as director of the German Kinder, Mutter und ein General (Children, Mother and the General). The film is set in Berlin during the last days of WW II. Desperate for manpower, Hitler has ordered that all able-bodied teenaged boys --some as young as 15 -- be drafted into the army. Frau Asmussen (Hilde Krahl) is one of five mothers who learn to their horror that their boys have been slated to be cannon fodder on behalf of the Third Reich. Asmussen and the other mothers head directly to the front to plead with the German generals for the lives of their sons. Not directly an indictment of Germany's involvement in (or incitement of) the recent war, Kinder, Mutter und ein General stresses the futility and heartbreak of all wars everywhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1955
Released one day before G. W. Pabst's Es Gescham am 20 Juli, Der 20 Juli was one of two concurrently produced German films dealing with a 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler. As in the Pabst film, the protagonist is Oberst Graf von Staufenberg, here played by Wolfgang Priess. In semi-documentary fashion, director Falk Harnack recounts the growing disaffection between Hitler and his military staff, culminating in Von Staufenberg's decision to assassinate Der Fuhrer and stage a coup. Curiously, Harnack's Von Staufenberg wears his trademarked eyepatch over his left eye, while Pabst's version of the character wears the patch over the right eye. It hardly matters, since history records that Von Staufenberg failed in his attempt, sparking a series of sham trials and thousands of brutal executions. Of the two "July 20" films, Pabst's is the better all-around production, while Harnack's is the more thorough so far as explaining Von Staufenberg's motives. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wolfgang Preiss, Fritz Tillmann, (more)
