The Other Schell

Advertisements for Judgment at Nuremberg line up the profiles of seven actors, overlapping one another like a hand of playing cards. From Spencer Tracy to Burt Lancaster, all but one are giant stars. The one face scarcely known to U.S. audiences is that of Maximilian Schell, 31-year-old brother of Maria Schell. But as the young defense attorney (a part that was sought by both Laurence Olivier and Frank Sinatra), Schell dominates the film and easily outdoes his more celebrated costars. He is going to become much better known as a performer of unusual excellence and also as a frank and outspoken actor-intellectual.

In Nuremberg, Schell's counsel for the defense is a brilliant young lawyer intent on lifting some of the guilt from German shoulders. Citing a precedent from U.S. law back at the U.S. judges, he snaps a book shut and announces in truncated accents that the opinion he had read was from "Oliver Wendell Holmes." His quick-flashing smile is no smile at all, disappearing as swiftly as the sound of clicked heels. A young, black-haired, deep-eyed man with a jut jaw and a strong, handsome face, he looks improbable in rimless glasses and courtroom robes. But he thoroughly commands the attention of both tribunal and audience. His performance is variously moving, impressive, terrifying and persuasive. For it he has just been named by the New York Film Critics the outstanding actor of 1961, and he will be a front-running candidate for an Oscar this spring.

Slightly Prostituted. Judgment at Nuremberg is Schell's second American film (he played a hobnail-minded Nazi officer in The Young Lions), and he has since completed two more: he is the German tutor in the film version of Five Finger Exercise, and he plays the i?th century

Italian priest Joseph of Cupertino in The Reluctant Saint, both scheduled for release later this year. He is now in hot demand, and his next film will probably be Jean-Paul Sartre's The Prisoners of Altona, with Sophia Loren, to be directed by Vittorio De Sica.

Trained on the stages of Switzerland. Austria. France and Germany, educated at the universities of Munich and Zurich, Schell is more intellectual than actor. He intends later on to write and direct (he wrote his first play when he was ten). "Acting," he says, "is a little like prostitution. When you do a scene, it is a little like making love. I don't like to be watched while making love. Since you get paid for it. it is like a prostitute who sells love."

Max & Maria. Acting is partly "a matter of family," explains Max with disarming candor, since "in Germany we Schells are like the Barrymores were in the U.S." Born in Vienna in 1930, Max is the third of four children of Swiss Poet-Playwright Hermann Schell. His mother was an actress. His brother Karl has established a sound acting reputation on the Continent. His younger sister, now called Editha Nordberg. is developing as a European film star. And his older sister, Maria, of course, is the most celebrated Germanic actress since Marlene Dietrich.

"Maria was and is my best friend," says Max. He has said that he would happily do a picture with her, provided "we would not play lovers, that our parts were equally strong, and that Maria got top billing." German friends suggest that Max was just being polite. Maria is reportedly wildly jealous of Max's rising fame, and Max, well aware of her feelings, has told friends that the only time he wants to see her is at family reunions on Christmas Eve.

The versatile Max is a gifted pianist, athlete (in university soccer he was the European equivalent of an All-America), and linguist (he speaks five languages and learned English in two weeks for his role in The Young Lions). With a tendency to extemporize lines, he has been both the bad and golden boy of the German theater. He once published an article condemning all German theater directors as "inept sadists." And four years ago, he caused a scandal in Berlin when he stopped cold in the middle of a performance and delivered a funeral oration for 15 German soldiers who had been drowned in a training accident that day.

He regards Hollywood with bemused disdain. "A town where you can't walk is uncivilized," he grumbles. But somehow he gets around. He is the constant companion of Nancy Kwan (Suzie Wong). with whom he swims and plays tennis. He has little to say for American women: "Already I have the feeling that every girl I meet is Kim Novak."

Beyond that, he resolutely refuses to discuss his private life. "I feel like the Arabs," he says. "They believe when you take a picture of someone, you take his soul away." Meanwhile, he is earning $5,000 a week for having his picture taken at the rate of 24 frames a second.

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