In Remembrance: Maria Schell

     Maria Schell, the Austrian-born actress who starred opposite Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), has passed away on Tuesday, April 26, 2005 in Preitenegg, Carinthia, Austria. She was 79.

     Born Margarete Schell on January 15, 1926 in Vienna, Austria, Schell was the older sister of actor Maximilian Schell and the daughter of Austrian playwright Ferdinand Hermann Schell and actress Margarethe Noe. When Germany invaded Austria in 1938, the family fled to Switzerland. It was here that she was cast at age 16 in her first film role in Swiss director Sigfrit Steiner’s drama Der Steibruch (The Quarry, 1942). She also attended Zurich's School of the Theatrical Arts and later joined the State Theater of Bern.

     Schell wouldn’t act again until after the War was over, appearing next in the 1948 film Maresi directed by Hand Thimig. Over the next few years, she appeared in several films, building up a reputation as one of the top actresses in Europe for her work in such films as White Nights (1957) and End Of Desire (1958). In 1954, she won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress prize for her role in the anti-war drama The Last Bridge as a German doctor captured by Yugoslav patriots during World War II. She received a Venice Film Festival citation in 1956 for her role as a washerwoman in the Montmartre section of Paris during the 1850s in the film Gervaise. Schell also appeared in a handful of Hollywood films including The Brothers Karamazov, The Hanging Tree (1959) with Gary Cooper and the western Cimarron (1960).

     After 1963’s Zwei Whisky und ein Sofa (Whiskey And Sofa), Schell announced her retirement from motion pictures. She returned to acting six years later with the drama La Provocation (The Provocation). The remainder of her career was spent appearing in character and supporting roles in such diverse films as Night Of The Blood Monster (1971), The Odessa File (1974), Voyage Of The Damned (1976), Superman (1978) and Just A Gigolo (1979). She also made numerous television appearances in such projects as the mini-series The Martian Chronicles (1980) and Inside The Third Reich (1982, as Albert Speer’s mother) and the made for television movie Samson And Delilah (1984).

     In 2002 she was the subject of the documentary My Sister Maria, directed by her brother Maximilian.