Maximilian Schell 1930-2014

As defense attorney Herr Rolfe in 1961's Judgement at Nuremberg. The film brought Schell an Oscar for Best Actor and everlasting immortality.

    Oscar winning actor Maximilan Schell passed on Feburary 1, 2014 at the age of 83 of a "sudden and serious illness."  Mr.Schell's film career was jump-started with his role as Marlon Brando's by-the-book commanding officer in 1958's The Young Lions. His next film got him an Academy Award for Best Actor, 1961's Judgement in Nuremberg. The film, an adaptation of  a Playhouse 90 teleplay,  saw Schell reprising his role as defense attorney Hans Rolfe who is hired to defend accused Nazi, Dr. Ernst Janning played by Burt Lancaster in the role previously offered to Laurence Olivier. Schell is nothing short of excellent in the film, though I have always been more entranced by Montgomery Clift's incredibly affecting turn as a simple minded witness who had been sterilized years earlier on the orders of Dr.Janning, and by Spencer Tracy's easy authority as Judge Dan Haywood, the film's conscious.

First break in Hollywood  : The anti-war film The Young Lions, based on the huge best seller by Irwin Shaw.

    Schell's film career had an up and down quality to it. The 1960's and 1970's found him most active in both Hollywood and European productions, some of the more notable being 1964's heist flick Topkapi  opposite Melina Mercouri, Sidney Lumet's integral spy-thriller The Deadly Affair, The Odessa File from 1974, another Oscar nominated performance in The Man in the Glass Booth, the Disney sci-fi flop The Black Hole, Fred Zinnemann's Julia in a brief, yet affecting performance as Lillian Hellman's {Jane Fonda} contact in Nazi Germany { another Oscar Nom, this time in the Supporting category } and a Nazi officer in the mega-budgeted-all-star war film A Bridge Too Far. After these high profile films Schell, who also had begun a career as an independent filmmaker, made fewer appearance's on the big screen, in fact Schell would record only six film or television perfs in the 1980's with one of his major successes as Peter in the TV-movie Peter The Great which won an Emmy as Outstanding Mini series in 1986.

The affecting, if possibly fictitious, Julia. The last great film by Fred Zinnemann and the film debut of one Mary Louise Streep.

    1984 brought the release of Marlene, a documentary on the life and career of the legendary Marlene Dietrich. The film, made under great duress as the subject at the last minute decided she didn't want to be filmed, was a major success for Schell and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. I think it one of the best doc's I have ever seen about a performer's life and how that performer tries to keep her career and life under her own control despite evidence to the contrary { the usual lies about birthdate, but also re-imagining the past as Dietrich wishes it to be remembered }.
The film presents a cranky Dietrich, at one point becoming exasperated by Schell's continuous questioning of her past, telling him he should " go back to Mama Schell and learn some manners".     
The film also is a sad representation of a icon who believes no one will care about her life in film and that it was all  "schmaltz". The film has recently been released on Blu-Ray, which I may seek out as my old VHS copy is of poor quality.

Great documentary of a great subject : The Magnificent Marlene Dietrich. I have this poster which I have hung in my apt from time to time. When they were little my sons never liked this poster. This one, and the Napoleon poster I had from the video release of the Able Gance silent classic, always freaked them out.

The 1990's brought some him some hullabaloo in film like his reunion with Brando in The Freshman { as the strange Larry London } and Deep Impact, a not bad disaster flick as Tea Leoni's dad and John Carpenter's 1998's pain-in-the-neck Vampires. Schell's last film was 2008's The Brothers Bloom. His sister is the actress Maria Schell. Per his Wikipedia page, Maximilian was married twice with no children listed. Godspeed, Max.