Actor and director who brought dark good looks and a commanding presence to his roles
Austrian by birth, Swiss by circumstance and international by reputation, Maximilian Schell, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished actor, director, writer and producer. However, he will be best remembered as an actor, especially for his Oscar-winning performance in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – an early highlight among scores of television and movie appearances. He also directed opera, worked tirelessly in the theatre and made six feature films, including Marlene (1984) - a tantalising portrait of Dietrich, his co-star in Judgment, who is heard being interviewed but not seen, except in movie extracts.
Schell courted controversy and much of his work, including The Pedestrian (1973), dealt with the second world war, its attendant crimes and the notion of collective guilt. In 1990, when he was offered a special award for his contributions to German film, he refused to accept it.
Austrian by birth, Swiss by circumstance and international by reputation, Maximilian Schell, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished actor, director, writer and producer. However, he will be best remembered as an actor, especially for his Oscar-winning performance in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – an early highlight among scores of television and movie appearances. He also directed opera, worked tirelessly in the theatre and made six feature films, including Marlene (1984) - a tantalising portrait of Dietrich, his co-star in Judgment, who is heard being interviewed but not seen, except in movie extracts.
Schell courted controversy and much of his work, including The Pedestrian (1973), dealt with the second world war, its attendant crimes and the notion of collective guilt. In 1990, when he was offered a special award for his contributions to German film, he refused to accept it.
- 2/3/2014
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
Why Watch? For starters, Bob Clampett was kind of a big deal and today is the 100th anniversary of his birthday. He directed cartoons for Warner Bros. from 1937 to 1947, a decade of boundlessly entertaining work. He was also a somewhat controversial character, mostly due to his insistence that he had created Bugs Bunny all on his own. That turns out to be entirely unfounded, of course, but at least Porky Pig was definitely his. The two of them face off in the first half of A Corny Concerto, the first time in WB history that two major characters shared a cartoon. The whole thing is a parody of Walt Disney’s work, Fantasia in particular. Elmer Fudd takes on the role of musicologist and conductor, rising from behind the orchestra to introduce “Tales from the Vienna Woods” in the style of Fantasia‘s Deems Taylor. He later returns for the second segment, “The Blue Danube...
- 5/8/2013
- by Daniel Walber
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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