Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was aSwiss[1] actor, theatre director, filmmaker, and musician ofAustrian origin. He was one of the most internationally-acclaimed German-speaking actors of his generation, earning accolades for his work on both screen and stage.[2] Born and initially raised inVienna, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 whenAustria was annexed byNazi Germany, and they settled inZürich. After theSecond World War, Schell took up acting and directing full-time.
Schell also performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance asPrince Hamlet,[3] and was a director of stage plays andoperas. He was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing withClaudio Abbado andLeonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. TheDeutsches Filminstitut called him "a universal artist."[4] His elder sister was actressMaria Schell; he directed the documentary tributeMy Sister Maria in 2002.
Schell was born inVienna, 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.[5][6] Though later in his career he would play several Jewish characters, his parents were bothRoman Catholic, and Schell stated he had no known Jewish ancestry.[6] His elder sisterMaria Schell was also an actress, as were their siblings, Carl (1927–2019)[7] and Immaculata "Immy" Schell (1935–1992).
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:
I grew up in a theatre atmosphere and took it for granted. I remember the theatre, as a child, the way most people remember their mother's cooking. Acting was all around me, and so was poetry. I made my debut in the theatre at the age of three, in Vienna ...[6]
The Schell family fled from Vienna in 1938 to get "away fromHitler" after theAnschluss, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. They resettled inZürich, Switzerland.[8]
In Zürich, Schell "grew up reading theclassics" and, when he was ten, wrote his first play.[6] Schell recalls that as a child, growing up surrounded by the theatre, he took acting for granted and did not want to become an actor at first: "What I wanted was to become a painter, a musician, or a playwright," like his father.[6]
Schell later attended theUniversity of Zurich for a year, where he also playedassociation football 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 theUniversity of Munich and studied philosophy and art history. During breaks, he would sometimes return home to Zürich or stay at his family's farm in the country so he could write in seclusion:
My father and my uncle hunt deer there, but I do not like to hunt. I like to walk through the forest by myself. In 1948 and 1949, when I wrote part of my first novel, which I have never shown to anyone, I isolated myself in one of the hunting cabins for three months, without a telephone, without electricity, with heat only from a large open fireplace.[6]
Schell then returned to Zürich, where he served in theSwiss Army for a year, after which he attended the sixth form ofUniversity College School, London, for one year before re-entering the University of Zurich for another year, and later, theUniversity 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:
I then decided, either you are a scientist or an artist ... To me it is much more important ... to admire and feel and be stimulated and inspired ... Art comes out of chaos, not out of a mechanical analyzing. So as soon as I made up my mind, there was no sense any more in continuing to study and in getting a degree. It is like an award; it does not mean anything in itself ... A university degree is just a title. I don't think an artist should have a title. It was time for me to concentrate on acting.[6]
Schell's film debut was in the German anti-war filmKinder, 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-starredKlaus Kinski as an officer, with Schell playing the part of an officer-deserter.[10] 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."[11]
Schell subsequently acted in seven more films made in Europe before going to the U.S.[12] Among those wasThe Plot to Assassinate Hitler (also 1955).[citation needed] Later in the same year he had a supporting role inJackboot Mutiny, in which he plays "a sensitive philosopher", who uses ethics to privately debate the arguments for assassinating Hitler.[11]
In 1958 Schell was invited to the United States to act in the Broadway play, "Interlock" byIra Levin, in which Schell played the role of an aspiring concert pianist.[13] He made hisHollywood debut in theWorld War II film,The Young Lions (1958), as the commanding German officer in another anti-war story, withMarlon Brando andMontgomery Clift. German film historian Robert C. Reimer writes that the film, directed byEdward Dmytryk, again drew on Schell's German characterisation to "portray young officers disillusioned with a war that no longer made sense."[11]
In 1960, Schell returned to Germany and played the title role inWilliam Shakespeare'sHamlet for German TV, a role that he would play on two more occasions in live theatre productions during his career. Along withLaurence Olivier, Schell is considered "one of the greatest Hamlets ever," according to one writer.[3] 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."[6] Schell's performance of Hamlet was featured as one of the last episodes of the American comedy seriesMystery Science Theater 3000 in 1999.
In 1959, Schell acted in the role of a defence attorney on a live TV production,Judgment at Nuremberg, a fictionalized re-creation of theNuremberg War Trials, in an edition ofPlayhouse 90. His performance in the TV drama was considered so good that he andWerner Klemperer were among the only members of the original cast selected to play the same parts in the 1961 film version. He won theAcademy Award for Best Actor, which was the first win for a German-speaking actor since World War II.[14] After winning theNew York Film Critics award for his role, Schell recalled the pride he felt upon receiving a letter from his older sisterMaria Schell, who was already an award-winning actress, "I received the most wonderful letter from Maria. She wrote, 'Now, when you have my letter in your hand, a beautiful day is coming for you. I will be with you, proud, because I knew such recognition would come one day, leading to something even greater and better ... not only because you are close to me but because I count you among the truly great actors, and it is wonderful that besides that you are my brother.' Maria and I are very close".[6]
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.[11] Biographer James Curtis notes that Schell prepared for his part in the movie by "reading the entire forty-volume record of the Nuremberg trials."[15] Author Barry Monush describes the impact of Schell's acting, "Again, on the big screen, he was nothing short of electrifying as the counselor whose determination to place the blame for theHolocaust on anyone else but his clients, and brings morality into question".[12][16]
Producer-directorStanley Kramer assembled a star-studdedensemble cast which includedSpencer Tracy andBurt Lancaster.[17] 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.[18] ActorWilliam Shatner remembers that, prior to the actual filming, "we understood the importance of the film we were making."[19] It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning two.[citation needed] In 2011, Schell appeared at a 50th anniversary tribute to the film and his Oscar win, held in Los Angeles at theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he spoke about his career and the film.[20]
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."[21] It was nominated for theBest Foreign Language Film Oscar[22] and was a "great and commercial success in Germany," notesRoger Ebert.[23]
Drawing of Schell after he won an Oscar forJudgment at Nuremberg (1961). Artist:Nicholas Volpe
During his career, as one of the few German-speaking actors working in English-language films, Schell was top billed in a number ofNazi-era themed films, includingCounterpoint (1968),The Odessa File (1974),The Man in the Glass Booth (1975),A Bridge Too Far (1977),Cross of Iron (1977) andJulia (1977). For the latter film, directed byFred Zinnemann, Schell was again nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist.[24]
In a number of films Schell played the role of a Jewish character: as Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, inThe Diary of Anne Frank (1980); as the modern Zionist father inThe Chosen (1981); in 1996, he played anAuschwitz survivor inThrough Roses, a German film, written and directed byJürgen Flimm;[24] and inLeft Luggage (1998) he played the father of a Jewish family.
InThe Man in the Glass Booth (1975), adapted from the stage play byRobert 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."[23][25] 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:
It's just that once in a long while a role comes along that I simply can't turn down. This was a role like that — how could I say no to it?[23]
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, includingJudgment at Nuremberg andThe 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."[26] Schell was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actor and theGolden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance. To avoid beingtypecast, Schell also played more diverse characters in numerous films throughout his career: he played a museum treasure thief inTopkapi (1964); theeponymous Venezuelan revolutionary inSimón Bolívar (1969); a 19th-century ship captain inKrakatoa, East of Java (1969); aCaptain Nemo-esque scientist/starship commander in the science fiction film,The Black Hole (1979).
Schell also served as a writer, producer and director for a variety of films, including the documentary filmMarlene (1984), with the participation ofMarlene Dietrich. It was nominated for an Oscar, received theNew York Film Critics Award and theGerman 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.[30]
Schell creatively showed onlysilhouettes of her along with old film clips during their interview soundtrack.[11] 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."[31][32]
Schell producedMy Sister Maria in 2002, an intimate documentary about his sister, the noted actressMaria Schell.[33] In the film, he chronicles her life, career and eventual diminished capacity due to illness.[citation needed] The film, made three years before her death, shows her mental and physical frailty, leading to her withdrawing from the world.[11] In 2002, upon the completion of the film, they both receivedBambi Awards, and were honored for their lifetime achievements and in recognition of the film.[3]
Leonard Bernstein and Schell during a TV series in 1983
Schell was a semi-professional pianist for much of his life. He had a piano when he lived inMunich 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."[6] ConductorLeonard Bernstein claimed that Schell was a "remarkably good pianist." In 1982 on a program filmed for the U.S. television networkPBS, Schell read from Beethoven's letters to the audience before Bernstein conducted the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven symphonies.
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.[34]
During the 1960s Schell had a three-year-long affair withSoraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, former second wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the lastShah of Iran. He also was rumored to have been engaged to the first African-American SupermodelDonyale Luna in the mid 1960s. In 1971 he had an affair withNeile Adams, according to her.[38] In 1985, he met the Russian actressNatalya Andrejchenko, whom he married in June 1985; their daughter Nastassja was born in 1989.[2] After 2002, separated from his wife (whom he divorced in 2005), Schell had a relationship with the Austrian art historian Elisabeth Michitsch. In 2008 he became romantically involved with German opera singerIva Mihanovic, who was 48 years his junior. They eventually married on 20 August 2013.
In 1994, producer Diana Botsford sued Schell for sexual harassment, after he allegedly propositioned her and tried to fondle her while they were working together on a television movie of which she was an associate producer. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount later that year.[39][40][41]
In 2023, his niece Marie Theres Relin (daughter ofMaria Schell), wrote in a book that she was abused and lost her virginity to an "uncle" in 1980, when she was 14. She later confirmed to the media that the uncle was Maximilian Schell.[42] Shortly thereafter, Schell's daughter Nastassja said to the media that she had known about this, and that she herself had also been sexually abused by her father as a child.[43][44]
Following Relin and Nastassja's accusations, theDeutsches Filminstitut, which had previously hosted an museum exhibition dedicted to the actor, disclaimed:
The DFF takes the current accusations against Maximilian Schell very seriously. They cast a different light on the person whose work the institution has been engaged with for years – including in a comprehensive special exhibition and publication, in various film programs and, not least, in the preservation of his artistic legacy. We reject any form of sexual and sexualized violence and express our solidarity with the victims. Separating the person of the artist from his or her work can in no way mitigate such allegations as are currently being made. In dealing with our collections and exhibitions, this means taking a respectful stance toward the individuals involved, while at the same time not engaging in censorship. It is also part of our institution’s responsibility to examine controversial aspects of the lives of famous people whose works have found a place in the cultural heritage of film.[4]
ActorJim Beaver, who studied under Schell at the University of Southern California, eulogized him as "one of the greatest actors of his generation, an astonishing performer of enormous power and breadth."[47]
