Maximilian Schell

born on 8/12/1930 in Wien, Wien, Austria

died on 1/2/2014 in Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria

Maximilian Schell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Maximilian Schell

Schell in 1970
Born December 8 1930
Vienna, Austria
Died 1 February 2014 (aged 83)
Innsbruck, Austria
Nationality Swiss
Occupation Actor, screenwriter, director, producer, production manager
Years active 1955-2014
Spouse(s) Natalya Andrejchenko (1985-2005)
Iva Mihanovic (2013-2014; his death)
Children Anastasia Schell (1989)
Relatives Maria Schell (sister, deceased)

Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 1 February 2014) was a Swiss[1] film and stage actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood. His parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by acting and literature. While he was a child, his family was forced to flee Vienna in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zurich, Switzerland. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting or directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving on to Hollywood.

Schell was top billed in a number of Nazi-era themed films, as he could speak both English and German. Among those were two films for which he received Oscar nominations: The Man in the Glass Booth (1975; best actor), where he played a character with two identities, and Julia (1977; best supporting actor), where he helps the underground in Nazi Germany.

His range of acting went beyond German characters, however, and during his career, he also played personalities as diverse as Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar, Russian emperor Peter the Great, and scientist Albert Einstein. For his role as Vladimir Lenin in the TV series, Stalin (1992), he won the Golden Globe Award. On stage, Schell acted in a number of plays, and his was considered "one of the greatest Hamlets ever."

In Schell's private life, he was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. His sister, Maria Schell, was also a noted Hollywood actress, about whom he produced the documentary, My Sister Maria, in 2002.

Early life

Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe (née Noe von Nordberg), an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright and pharmacy owner.[2][3] His parents were Roman Catholic.[3]

Schell's father was never enthusiastic about young Maximilian becoming an actor like his mother, feeling that it could not lead to "real happiness." However, Schell was surrounded by acting in his early youth:

The Schell family was forced to flee Vienna in 1938 to get "away from Hitler" after the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. They resettled in Zurich, Switzerland.[4]

In Zurich, Schell "grew up reading the classics," and when he was ten, wrote his first play.[3] Schell recalls that as a child, growing up surrounded by the theatre, he took acting for granted and didn't want to become an actor at first: "What I wanted was to become a painter, a musician, or a playwright," like his father.[3]

Schell later attended the University of Zurich for a year, where he also played soccer and was on the rowing team, along with writing for newspapers as a part-time journalist for income. Following the end of World War II, he moved to Germany where he enrolled in the University of Munich and studied philosophy and art history. During breaks, he would sometimes return home to Zurich or stay at his family's farm in the country so he could write in seclusion:

Schell then returned to Zurich, where he served in the Swiss Army for a year, after which he re-entered the University of Zurich for another year, and later, the University of Basel for six months. During that period, he acted professionally in small parts, in both classical and modern plays, and decided that he would from then on devote his life to acting rather than pursue academic studies:

Schell began acting at the Basel Theatre.[5]

Schell's late elder sister, Maria Schell, was also an actress, as are their two other siblings, Carl and Immy (Immaculata) Schell.

Career

Schell's film debut was in the German anti-war film Kinder, Mütter und ein General (Children, Mothers, and a General, 1955). It was the story of five mothers who confronted a German general at the front line, after learning that their sons, some as young as 15, had been "slated to be cannon fodder on behalf of the Third Reich." The film co-starred Klaus Kinski as an officer, with Schell playing the part of an officer-deserter.[6] The story, which according to one critic, "depicts the insanity of continuing to fight a war that is lost," would become a "trademark" for many of Schell's future roles: "Schell's sensitivity in his portrayal of a young deserter disillusioned with fighting became a trademark of his acting."[7]

Schell subsequently acted in seven more films made in Europe before going to the U.S.[8] Among those was The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (also 1955).[9] Later in the same year he had a supporting role in Jackboot Mutiny, in which he plays "a sensitive philosopher," who uses ethics to privately debate the arguments for assassinating Hitler.[7]

In 1958 Schell was invited to the United States to act in the Broadway play, "Interlock" by Ira Levin, in which Schell played the role of an aspiring concert pianist.[10] He made his Hollywood debut in the World War II film, The Young Lions (1958), as the commanding German officer in another anti-war story, with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. German film historian Robert C. Reimer writes that the film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, again drew on Schell's powerful German characterisation to "portray young officers disillusioned with a war that no longer made sense."[7]

In 1960, Schell returned to Germany and played the title role in William Shakespeare's Hamlet for German TV, a role that he would play on two more occasions in live theatre productions during his career. Along with Laurence Olivier, Schell is considered "one of the greatest Hamlets ever," according to some.[11] Schell recalled that when he played Hamlet for the first time, "it was like falling in love with a woman. ... not until I acted the part of Hamlet did I have a moment when I knew I was in love with acting."[3] Schell's performance of Hamlet was featured as one of the last episodes of the American comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1999.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

In 1959, Schell acted in the role of a defense attorney in an edition of Playhouse 90 a live TV production of Judgment at Nuremberg, a fictionalized re-creation of the Nuremberg War Trials. His performance in the TV drama was considered so good that he and Werner Klemperer were the only members of the original cast selected to play the same parts in the 1961 film version. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, which was the first win for a German-speaking actor since World War II.[12]

After also winning the New York Film Critics award for his role, Schell recalled the pride he felt upon receiving a letter from his older sister, Maria Schell, who was already an award-winning actress:

According to Reimer, Schell gave a "bravura performance," where he tried to defend his clients, Nazi judges, "by arguing that all Germans share a collective guilt" for what happened.[7] Biographer James Curtis notes that Schell prepared for his part in the movie by "reading the entire forty-volume record of the Nuremberg trials."[13] Author Barry Monush describes the impact of Schell's acting:

Producer-director Stanley Kramer assembled a star-studded ensemble cast which included Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.[14] They "worked for nominal wages out of a desire to see the film made and for the opportunity to appear in it," notes film historian George McManus.[15] Actor William Shatner remembers that prior to the actual filming, "we understood the importance of the film we were making."[16] It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning two.[17] In 2011, Schell appeared at a 50th anniversary tribute to the film and his Oscar win, held in Los Angeles at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he spoke about his career and the film.[18]

Independent filmmaker

Beginning in 1968 Schell began writing, producing, directing and acting in a number of his own films: Among those were The Castle (1968), a German film based on the novel by Franz Kafka, about a man trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare. Soon after he made Erste Liebe (First Love) (1970), based on a novel by Ivan Turgenev. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Schell's next film, The Pedestrian (1974), is about a German tycoon "haunted by his Nazi past". In this film, notes one critic, "Schell probes the conscience and guilt in terms of the individual and of society, reaching to the universal heart of responsibility and moral inertia."[19] It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar[20] and was a "great and commercial success in Germany," notes Roger Ebert.[21]

Schell then produced, directed and acted as a supporting character in End of the Game (1975), a German crime thriller starring Jon Voight and Jacqueline Bisset. A few years later he co-wrote and directed the Austrian film, Tales from the Vienna Woods (1979).

World War II themes

During his career, as one of the few German-speaking actors working in English-language films, Schell was top billed in a number of Nazi-era themed films, including Counterpoint (1968), The Odessa File (1974), The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Cross of Iron (1977) and Julia (1977). For the latter film, directed by Fred Zinnemann, Schell was again nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist.[22]

In a number of films Schell played the role of a Jewish character: as Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, in The Diary of Anne Frank (1980); as the modern Zionist father in The Chosen (1981); in 1996, he played an Auschwitz survivor in Through Roses, a German film, written and directed by Jürgen Flimm;[22][23] and in Left Luggage (1998) he played the father of a Jewish family.

In The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), adapted from the stage play by Robert Shaw, Schell played both a Nazi officer and a Jewish Holocaust survivor, in a character with a double identity. Roger Ebert describes the main character, Albert Goldman, as "mad, and immensely complicated, and he is hidden in a maze of identities so thick that no one knows for sure who he really is."[21][24] Schell, who at that period in his career saw himself primarily as a director, felt compelled to accept the part when it was offered to him:

Schell's acting in the film has been compared favorably to his other leading roles, with film historian Annette Insdorf writing, "Maximilian Schell is even more compelling as the quick-tempered, quicksilver Goldman than in his previous Holocaust-related roles, including Judgment at Nuremberg and The Condemned of Altona". She gives a number of examples of Schell's acting intensity, including the courtroom scenes, where Schell's character, after supposedly being exposed as a German officer, "attacks Jewish meekness" in his defense, and "boasts that the Jews were sheep who didn't believe what was happening." The film eventually suggests that Schell's character is in fact a Jew, but one whose sanity has been compromised by "survivor guilt."[25] Schell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance.

Character actor

To avoid being typecast, Schell also played more diverse characters in numerous films throughout his career: he played a museum treasure thief in Topkapi (1964); a Venezuelan leader in Simón Bolívar (1969); a 19th-century ship captain in Krakatoa, East of Java (1969); a mad scientist in the science fiction film, The Black Hole (1979); the Russian emperor in the television miniseries, Peter the Great (1986), opposite Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave and Trevor Howard, which won an Emmy Award; a comedy role with Marlon Brando in The Freshman (1990); a Cardinal in John Carpenter's Vampires (1998); as Frederick the Great in a TV film, Young Catherine (1991); as Vladimir Lenin in the TV series, Stalin (1992), for which he won the Golden Globe Award;[26] a Russian KGB colonel in Candles in the Dark (1993); the Pharaoh in Abraham (1994); and a father in the science fiction thriller, Deep Impact (1998).

From the 1990s until late in his career, Schell appeared in many German-language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser Erde (All the Luck in the World) opposite Uschi Glas and in the television miniseries The Return of the Dancing Master (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel. In 2006 he appeared in the stage play of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, directed by Robert Altman, which played in London at the Old Vic.[27] In 2007, he played the role of Albert Einstein on the German television series Giganten (Giants), which enacted the lives of people important in German history.[7][28]

Documentaries

Schell also served as a writer, producer and director for a variety of films, including the problematic documentary film, Marlene (1984), with the unwilling participation of Marlene Dietrich. It was nominated for an Oscar, received the New York Film Critics Award and the German Film Award. Originally, Dietrich, then 83 years of age, had agreed to allow Schell to interview and film her in the privacy of her apartment. However, after he began filming, she changed her mind and refused to allow any actual video footage of her be shown. During a videotaped interview, Schell described the difficulties he had while making the film.[29]

Schell creatively showed only silhouettes of her along with old film clips during their interview soundtrack.[7] According to one review, "the true originality of the movie is the way it pursues the clash of temperament between interviewer and star. . . . he draws her out, taunting her into a fascinating display of egotism, lying and contentiousness."[30][31]

In 2002, Schell produced his most intimate film, My Sister Maria, a documentary about his sister, noted actress Maria Schell.[32] In the film, he chronicles her life, career and eventual diminished capacity due to illness.[33][34] The film, made three years before her death, shows her mental and physical frailty, leading to her withdrawing from the world.[7] In 2002, upon the completion of the film, they both received Bambi Awards, and were honored for their lifetime achievements and in recognition of the film.[11]

Personal life

During the 1960s Schell had a three-year-long affair with Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, former wife of the last Shah of Persia. In 1985 he meet the Russian actress Natalya Andrejchenko, whom he married in June 1986, their daughter Nastassja was born in 1989.[35] Since 2002, separated from his wife and divorced since 2005, he had temporarily a relationship with the Austrian art historian Elisabeth Michitsch. Since 2008, he was romantically involved with the 47-year younger German opera singer Iva Mihanovic that he on 20 August 2013 married.

Schell was a semi-professional pianist for much of his life. He had a piano when he lived in Munich and said that he would play for hours at a time for his own pleasure and to help him relax: "I find I need to rest. An actor must have pauses in between work, to renew himself, to read, to walk, to chop wood."[3]

Conductor Leonard Bernstein claimed that Schell was a "remarkably good pianist." In 1982, on a program filmed for the U.S. television network PBS, before Bernstein conducted the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven symphonies, Schell read from Beethoven's letters to the audience. In 1983, he and Bernstein co-hosted an 11-part TV series, Bernstein/Beethoven, featuring nine live symphonies, along with discussions between Bernstein and Schell about Beethoven's works.[36] On other occasions, Schell worked with Italian conductor Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, which included a performance in Chicago of Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, and another in Jerusalem, of Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw.[4] Schell also produced and directed a number of live operas, including Richard Wagner's Lohengrin for the Los Angeles Opera. He worked on the film project Beethoven's Fidelio, with Plácido Domingo and Kent Nagano.[11]

Schell was a guest professor at the University of Southern California and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.[11]

Death

Schell died age 83 on 1 February 2014, in Innsbruck, Austria after a "sudden and serious illness".[37] The German television news service Tagesschau reported that he had been receiving treatment for pneumonia.[38]

Filmography

Title Year Role Notes
Kinder, Mütter und ein General 1955 Deserteur
The Last Ones Shall Be First 1957 Lorenz Darrandt
The Young Lions 1958 Captain Hardenberg
Hamlet 1961 Hamlet Used in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000
Judgment at Nuremberg 1961 Hans Rolfe Academy Award for Best Actor
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Motion Picture Drama
Laurel Award for Top Male Dramatic Performance (2nd place)
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor
Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Five Finger Exercise 1962 Walter
The Reluctant Saint 1962 Giuseppe
The Condemned of Altona 1962 Franz von Gerlach
Topkapi 1964 Walter Harper
Return from the Ashes 1965 Stanislaus Pilgrin
The Deadly Affair 1966 Dieter Frey
The Castle 1968 'K'
Counterpoint 1968 General Schiller
Heidi 1968 Richard Sessemann Television film
Simón Bolívar 1969 Simón Bolívar
Krakatoa, East of Java 1969 Captain Hanson
Erste Liebe 1970 Father San Sebastián International Film Festival Silver Seashell
Nominated Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[39]
Pope Joan 1972 Adrian
The Pedestrian 1973 Andreas Giese Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Odessa File 1974 Eduard Roschmann
The Day That Shook the World 1975 Djuro Sarac
Der Richter und sein Henker 1975 Robert Schmied on Audiotape Voice; uncredited role
San Sebastián International Film Festival Silver Seashell
The Man in the Glass Booth 1975 Arthur Goldman Nominated Academy Award for Best Actor
Nominated Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
St. Ives 1976 Dr. John Constable
Cross of Iron 1977 Captain Stransky
Julia 1977 Johann New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor (3rd place)
Nominated Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Nominated Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor
A Bridge Too Far 1977 Lieutenant General Bittrich
Avalanche Express 1979 Bunin
The Black Hole 1979 Dr. Hans Reinhardt
Together? 1979 Giovanni
The Diary of Anne Frank 1980 Otto Frank Television film
The Chosen 1981 Professor David Malter
The Phantom of the Opera 1983 Sándor Korvin / The Phantom of the Opera
Man Under Suspicion 1984 Lawyer Landau
The Assisi Underground 1985 Col. Müller Television film 175 minutes
Peter the Great 1986 Peter the Great TV miniseries
The Rosegarden 1989 Aaron
The Freshman 1990 Larry London
Young Catherine 1991 Frederick the Great
Stalin 1992 Vladimir Lenin Television film
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film
Nominated Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
Candles in the Dark 1993 Colonel Arkush Television film
Also director
Justice 1993 Isaak Kohler
A Far Off Place 1993 Colonel Mopani Theron
Abraham 1994 Pharaoh Television film
Little Odessa 1995 Arkady Shapira
The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years 1996 Cardinal Vittorio TV miniseries
Telling Lies in America 1997 Istvan Jonas
The Eighteenth Angel 1998 Father Simeon
Left Luggage 1998 Mr. Silberschmidt
Vampires 1998 Cardinal Alba
Deep Impact 1998 Jason Lerner
Joan of Arc 1999 Brother Jean le Maistre TV miniseries
I Love You, Baby 2000 Walter Ekland
Festival in Cannes 2001 Viktor Kovner
Coast to Coast 2003 Casimir Television film
The House of Sleeping Beauties 2006 Kogi
The Shell Seekers 2006 Lawrence Sterne TV miniseries
The Brothers Bloom 2008 Diamond Dog

24

Other awards and nominations

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.
  • 1961: Won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the American film "Judgment at Nuremberg".
  • 1965: Ondas Award (Best Actor)
  • 1979: Golden Hugo Award for Tales from the Vienna Woods
  • 1980: German Film Award in Silver (program-filling feature film) for Tales from the Vienna Woods
  • 1984: German Film Award, Film Award for the role Morning in Alabama
  • 1985: Golden Globe nomination (documentary) for Marlene
  • 1985: Merit Cross 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse)
  • 1985: Nominated for Academy Award for Documentary Feature for Marlene
  • 1990: Honorary Award of the German Film Award
  • 1992: Emmy Award nomination (Best Actor) in the TV film Miss Rose White
  • 1999: Method Fest for Lifetime Achievement
  • 1999: Platinum Romy for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2000: Satellite Award, Mary Pickford Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2002: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class[40]
  • 2002: Bambi Award
  • 2006: Honorary Award of the Bavarian Film Awards for artistic mastery and humanism
  • 2008: Diva Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2009: Premio Roma
  • 2009: Bambi Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2011: Honorary Award of the Bernhard Wicki Film Award - The Bridge[41]

See also

  • List of German-speaking Academy Award winners and nominees

References

  1. Johnstone, Iain (1977). The Arnhem Report: The story behind A Bridge Too Far. I'm Swiss, but I was born in Austria.
  2. Maximillian Schell Film Reference biography
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Ross, Lillian and Helen. The Player: A Profile of an Art, Simon & Schuster (1961) pp. 231-239
  4. 4.0 4.1 "Artists of Holocaust Symphony: 'The Train' ", Nov. 22, 2004
  5. Maximillian Schell bio at Yahoo! Movies
  6. "Kinder, Mutter und Ein General (1955)", New York Times, accessed, Sept. 29, 2013
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Reimer, Robert C. and Carol J., The A to Z of German Cinema, Rowman and Littlefield (2008) pp. 258-260
  8. Monush, Barry. The Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (2003) pp. 666-667
  9. The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, IMDB
  10. Interlock, Playbill, Feb. 6, 1958
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 "Maximilian Schell: The Actor of the Millenium", Bohème Magazine Online, 2003
  12. "Maximilian Schell winning Best Actor Award for Judgment at Nurmeberg at YouTube , video clip, 2 minutes
  13. Curtis, James. Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Random House (2011) p. 783
  14. movie trailer: "Judgment at Nuremberg" at YouTube
  15. Mcmanus, George. A Conservative Christian Reviews the Greatest Movies Ever Made, Xulon Press (2003) p. 94
  16. Shatner, William. Up Till Now: The Autobiography, Macmillan (2008) p. 76
  17. "Awards for Judgment at Nuremberg IMDB
  18. "OSCAR ALUMNI: Maximilian Schell to Appear at Academy Tribute Tuesday", The Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 11, 2011
  19. New York Magazine, April 22, 1974 p. 14
  20. The 46th Academy Awards (1974) Nominees and Winners. oscars.org. Retrieved on 3 December 2011.
  21. 21.0 21.1 Ebert, Roger. "Interview with Maximilian Schell", August 17, 1975
  22. 22.0 22.1 Bock, Hans-Michael; Bergfelder, Tim. The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopedia of German Cinema, Berghahn Books (2009) p. 417
  23. Through Roses, IMDB
  24. "The Man in the Glass Booth" at YouTube , video trailer, 2.5 minutes
  25. Insdorf, Annette. Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, 3rd ed., Cambridge Univ. Press (2003) p. 171
  26. "Maximilian Schell Wins Best Supporting Actor Award" at YouTube , video, 2 minutes
  27. Resurrection Blues review
  28. "Albert Einstein - Giants" at YouTube , 10 min. video clip
  29. "Maximilian Schell on Marlene Dietrich" at YouTube , 6 minute video
  30. New York Magazine, Dec. 1, 1986 p. 166
  31. video clip: Marlene at YouTube , 1984 documentary
  32. "My Sister Maria" trailer at YouTube , video, 1 minute
  33. Maximilian Schell biography, IMDB
  34. My Sister Maria, IMDB
  35. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/02/maximilian-schell
  36. Leonard Bernstein and Maximilian Schell discussing Beethoven's 6th and 7th Symphony at YouTube , video clip, 9 minutes
  37. Oscar-Winning Actor Maximilian Schell Dies at 83, 1 February 2014. URL accessed on 1 February 2014.
  38. Maximillian Schell is Dead at Tagesschau (German language). Retrieved 1 February 2014
  39. The 43rd Academy Awards (1971) Nominees and Winners. oscars.org. Retrieved on 26 November 2011.
  40. Reply to a parliamentary question (pdf) (German). Retrieved on 17 January 2013.
  41. "Honorary members of the Bernhard Wicki Memorial Fund"

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