Saturday, February 01, 2014

RIP Maximilian Schell

Admired Maximilian Schell. Was only a few months ago that I re-watched him in Judgment at Nuremberg and was impressed all over by his performance (he plays the German charged with defending various Nazi war criminals during their trial; not exactly an easy role to make sympathetic). He's one of the short-list of actors who improve any film they appear in (with the possible exception of John Carpenter's Vampires). And Schell's documentary about Marlene Dietrich is also fascinating, though I haven't seen it for years; she would only agree to talk to him if her image wasn't used, so it's just their voices in conversation, with stills, scenes from films and historical footage, say, but he gets some great stuff out of her, despite her apparent contentiousness. Her anecdote about her return to Germany after the war is both painful and revealing... he talks about the project here.

No comments: