Meine Schwester Maria

One of the hardest tasks in filming any plot is to keep dignity when it comes to taboo subjects.

One of those is "getting old". This film offers a close perspective to the come-into-years Maria Schell. Old-time-stories alternate with the difficulty of coping with everyday problems. After all, the film is about anyone...it is our own future. The film's words and pictures are poetry of a very special kind. Its tenderness - which only a brother can film - is without compare: 10!

A most affecting film by actor and director Maximilian Schell of his extremely talented and beautiful sister, Maria. Contains a large number of wonderful clips from her German and American films with actors such as Gary Cooper (her favorite leading man), Marlon Brando, Oscar Werner, and others. These excerpts clearly demonstrate why Maria Schell was such an internationally acclaimed actress, especially during the period from the 1940s to the 1960s. Interwoven throughout the film are scenes from her childhood including those from private home movies. Most revealing and perhaps of most interest are scenes of her in the last years of her life in which she comments on important influences on her life and the many struggles she endured.

Maria Schell a famous Austrian actress is filmed at the age of 75 having suffered possibly a stroke living in her ancestral home.

This is a semi staged documentary highlighting problems in the last years of her life--her mental dementia foremost--but also her being broke and spending her time ordering expensive items advertised on television---she has 11 television sets on which at least according to the documentary she watches her old movies.

Her brother apparently wealthy and also a famous actor steps in and manages her life as creditors close in.

There are lots of film clips.

This is clearly a movie for fans of the actress. I had never heard of her and her very limited mental abilities allow nothing but the shallowest conversation. But it is still touching and sad.

Don't Recommend unless you know this actress

This is a creepy movie.

It pretends to be a documentary, but it is totally scripted, totally staged, and feels totally false. It also pretends to be a tribute to Maria Schell by her younger brother Maximilian, and it is filled with so many clips from her old movies that it could make even a devoted fan pray for relief - but in actual interactions between the siblings he's so critical of her and so overbearing that it borders on abuse. Even the supposed ravages of her old age are faked and exploited for the camera, which is really infuriating.

This is a phony, cloying, suffocatingly obsessive movie that indulges Max Schell's obvious obsession with older German female movie stars. It's much like his equally creepy and equally phony "filmed" interview with Marlene Dietrich (only the audio is Dietrich; the video is faked with stand-ins), made practically against her will a couple of decades earlier, not long before she died.

After watching this supposed tribute, I cared less about Maria Schell than I did before, and I lost what little respect I still had for her brother. He was fabulous in Judgment at Nuremberg, but he's come a long way down in the five decades since then.

This semi-staged documentary about the one time international movie star Maria Schell is mostly interesting for brother's Max Schell's gentle manipulation of his dementia challenged sister and his staged scenes using doubles. The long retired Maria living in the old family homestead amid the breathtaking Alps is in danger of losing it because of her diminished capacity which results in binge spending (eleven television sets) and gift giving (she buys someone a horse drawn hearse). Max attempts to get his sister physically if not mentally better. When he finds out about her dire financial straights he sells a Mark Rothko painting for millions and holds onto the house. As this unfolds Max documents and stages a biography on her life.

Whether it's her memory or her brother's inability to ask the tough questions this bio reveals little about Schell whose watery blue eyes remain youthful even in dotage. There's plenty of archival film clips but the addled Maria can only add so much to the conversation at the gentle urgings of her brother. The scenes involving her attempts to physically strengthen herself are mostly the work of stand ins with one exception that has "old trouper" Maria lying face down in the snow. With sleight of hand and Maria's diminished capacity Schell never really balances his documentary enough to make it revealing or coherent as a whole. He further obfuscates matters with an inexplicable conflagration staged at film's end, making things even murkier in this bio that says more about the ravages of age than Maria.