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... (read more) 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.
As the new decade began he appeared in Fisimatenten, and in 2002 he directed My Sister Maria. In 2008 he appeared in both House of the Sleeping Beauties, and the con-artist comedy The Brothers Bloom. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
House of the Sleeping Beauties
NR 2008
Director Vadim Glowna explores such complicated issues as loneliness, guilt, remembrance, mourning, sex, death, and dying in this adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata's novel...
The Brothers Bloom
PG13 2008
When the younger of two notorious sibling con artists announces a plan to go legit, his brother implores him to carry out one last swindle in the eagerly anticipated sophomore...
Brando
2007
As originally screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at the Cannes Film Festival, and on Turner Classic Movies, the mammoth, epic-length documentary Brando chronicles in...
Coast to Coast
R 2003
Paul Mazursky's Coast to Coast features a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. Barnaby (Richard Dreyfuss) and Maxine (Judy Davis) are attempting to salvage...
My Sister Maria
2002
Eighteen years after his acclaimed 1984 documentary on Marlene Dietrich, actor/director Maximilian Schell has created another moving portrait of a German-speaking...
Festival In Cannes
PG13 2001
The romance, intrigue, and industry politics of the world's biggest film festival -- which is also the world's biggest film marketplace -- provides the backdrop for this typically...
The Song of the Lark
2000
Acclaimed author Willa Cather offers a moving tale of an artist's self-discovery in a semi-autobiographical tale concerning a young woman from rural Colorado who moves to the...
Fisimatenten
2000
An artist finds that leaving the creative life behind is more complicated than he expected in this comedy. Edward Schreiner (Tonio Arango) is a painter whose unusual ideas...
Joan of Arc
NR 1999
A literal interpretation of the oft-produced biography of 15th century historical heroine Joan d'Arc, this four-hour television miniseries version of Joan's story is lavishly...
Vampires
R 1998
John Carpenter directed this horror-western, adapted from the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley, illuminating the pivotal figure of fearless vampire killer Jack Crow...
Left Luggage
1998
Actor Jeroen Krabbe made his directorial debut with this Dutch-Belgian-U.S. drama examining anti-Semitic attitudes in 1972 Antwerp. Free-spirited 20-year-old student Chaja...
Deep Impact
PG13 1998
Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker) directed this science-fiction disaster drama about the possible extinction of human life after a comet is discovered headed toward Earth with the...
Telling Lies In America
PG13 1997
Karchy Jonas (Brad Renfro) was born in Hungary and immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1960s where he felt adrift in a strange sea of American culture. Jonas tries to...
The Eighteenth Angel
R 1997
This ominous apocalypse thriller sports a fairly ambitious but ultimately confusing plot involving a prophecy which proclaims that the return of Satan will be precipitated by the...
The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years
1996
This follow-up to the wildly popular miniseries The Thorn Birds (based on the best-selling novel by Colleen McCullough) tells the tale of a period during World War II that...
Little Odessa
R 1994
A somber portrait of organized crime and family trauma, Little Odessa centers on the trouble caused when hit man Joshua Shapira (Tim Roth) returns to his old neighborhood of...
Abraham
1994
This entry into TNT's lavish and acclaimed Bible Series follows the tale of humble shepherd Abraham (Richard Harris) as he leads his flock to the Promised Land despite...
Justiz
1993
Quite a few years ago, Isaak Kohler (Maximillian Schell) cooly walked up to a man everyone assumed was his friend and shot him dead. This took place in front of dozens of...
A Far Off Place
PG 1993
The directorial debut of Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Mikael Salomon (The Abyss), A Far Off Place is based on a pair of books by novelist Laurens Van der...
Candles in the Dark
1993
...