gsn-film-club: Maximilian Schell (Dec. 8, 1930

I know I've promised we'll watch the second DVD from the Clouzot collection, but this weekend a great actor has passed away. His name was Maximilian Schell. I thought to commemorate this great artist, with on of his best known films: "Judgment at Nuremberg" - and postpone "L'Enfer" for the next GSN-Film-Club edition.

Here is what "The Telegraph" had to say about him:

Austrian actor Maximilian Schell, who won an Academy award for his role as a German defence attorney in the acclaimed 1961 courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg, has died aged 83.

The Vienna-born actor died overnight at a clinic in Innsbruck as the result of a "sudden and serious illness", his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, told the Austria Press Agency on Saturday.

One of the best-known foreign actors in US films, Schell starred on stage and screen on both sides of the Atlantic after growing up in Switzerland, where his family settled to escape the Nazis after Germany's 1938 annexation of Austria.

The brother of actress Maria Schell, he also won a Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle award for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg, which followed a television drama version of the play.

The film, directed by Stanley Kramer, was a dramatisation of the war crimes trials in Germany that followed the second world war. It focused on an international tribunal, headed by Americans, that was handling the trials of four German judges accused of knowingly condemning innocent men to death in concert with the Nazis.

For his portrayal of defence attorney Hans Rolfe, Schell earned broad international recognition. He was part of an all-star cast that also included Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark and Judy Garland.

Schell won the Oscar for best actor, beating, among others, his co-star Tracy.

Schell was nominated for two more Oscars, for best actor for The Man in the Glass Booth in 1976 and for best supporting actor in Julia in 1978.

Also a prolific television actor, Schell won the 1993 Golden Globe for best actor in a supporting role in the TV movie Stalin, in which he co-starred with Robert Duvall.

He made his mark as a film director as well. He directed and starred in The Pedestrian (1973), which was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film. He also directed the Oscar-nominated documentary Marlene (1984) about Marlene Dietrich.

Schell was also a talented pianist and directed operas.

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When: Wednesday, 5th of Feb., 18:30
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Where: GSN Room, Ground Floor - Biocenter
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