ROMY SCHNEIDER, A LONG CAREER IN A SHORT TIME

Today, The Grandma is at home watching some French films. She has chosen some of them interpreted by Romy Schneider, the German-French actress who died on a day like today in 1982.

Romy Schneider, born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach (23 September 1938-29 May 1982) was a German-French actress.

She began her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Visconti's Ludwig (1973).

Schneider moved to France where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era.

Schneider was born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Vienna to actors Magda Schneider and Wolf Albach-Retty. Her paternal grandmother, Rosa Albach-Retty, was also an actress. Schneider's mother was German while her father was Austrian.

Romy Schneider's first film, made when she was 15, was When the White Lilacs Bloom Again (1953), credited as Romy Schneider-Albach.

In 1954, Schneider, for the first time, portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin.

Schneider's breakthrough came with her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the romantic biopic Sissi (1955) and its two sequels, Sissi-The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi-Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), all with Karlheinz Böhm, who became a close friend. Less stereotypical films during this busy period include The Girl and the Legend (1957), working with a young Horst Buchholz, and Monpti (1957), directed by Helmut Käutner, again with Buchholz.

Schneider soon starred in Christine (1958), a remake of Max Ophüls's 1933 film Liebelei, in which her mother Magda Schneider had played the same role. It was during the filming of Christine that Schneider fell in love with French actor Alain Delon who co-starred in the film. She left Germany to join him in Paris, and they announced their engagement in 1959.

More information: The Guardian

Schneider decided to live and to work in France, slowly gaining the interest of film directors such as Orson Welles for The Trial (1962), based on Franz Kafka's The Trial. She was also introduced by Delon to Luchino Visconti. Under Visconti's direction, she gave performances in the Théâtre Moderne as Annabella and Delon as Giovanni in John Ford's stage play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1961), and in the film Boccaccio '70.

In 1962, Schneider played Anna in Sacha Pitoëff's production of Chekhov's play The Seagull, also at the Théâtre Moderne.

A brief stint in Hollywood included a starring role in Good Neighbor Sam (1964), a comedy with Jack Lemmon, while What's New Pussycat? (1965), although American-financed, was shot in and around Paris. Schneider co-starred with Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen.

Romy Schneider and Alain Delon decided to separate in December 1963, although they remained close life-long friends. They continued to work together in such films as La Piscine (1968), which revitalized her career, and The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).

Schneider continued to work in France during the 1970s, most notably with director Claude Sautet on five films. Their first collaboration, Les choses de la vie (1970) featuring Michel Piccoli, made Schneider an icon in France. The three collaborated again for the noir thriller Max et les ferrailleurs (1971), and she appeared with Yves Montand in Sautet's César et Rosalie (1972).

Other successes from this period included Le Train (1973), where she played a German-Jewish refugee in World War II, Claude Chabrol's thriller Les innocents aux mains sales (1975) with Rod Steiger, and Le vieux fusil (1975). The gritty L'important c'est d'aimer (1974) garnered her first César Award, France's equivalent of the Oscar, a feat she repeated five years later, in her last collaboration with Sautet, for Une histoire simple (1978).

She also acted in Le Trio infernal (1974) with Michel Piccoli, and in Garde à vue (1981) with Michel Serrault and Lino Ventura. An unpleasant incident occurred during this period with leading German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who wanted to cast her as the lead in his film The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979).

Schneider was found dead in her Paris flat on 29 May 1982.

More information: Mature Times

I wish to present myself in front of the camera,
each time under the features of a different woman.
I would like to live and apprehend the problems,
the conflicts, the feelings and the impulses of women
radically different from me.

Romy Schneider