Film Archive

Pedestrian, The (Fussgaenger, Der)

An industrialist is forced to face himself after a fatal accident to his only son. 65-year-old Giese – like any German of his generation – has some doubtful patches in his personal history during the last war. A sensationalist newspaper concocts a story exposing his alleged war crimes.

Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna in 1930. The Austrian-born lead made his screen debut in the mid-1950s and appeared in a number of German films before arriving in Hollywood in 1958. Schell earned an OSCAR for Best Actor for his role as a defense attorney in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) and received similar acclaim for his character roles in films such as The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and Julia (1977). In the meantime, he turned to production, with a 1968 adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Castle, and direction, with First Love (1970), based on a story by Turgenev. He wrote, produced and starred in his second feature as a director, The Pedestrian (Der Fuessgaenger, 1973), which was nominated for an OSCAR for Best Foreign Film. Schell's fascinating 1984 documentary, Marlene, centered on an "interview" with Marlene Dietrich. His most recent films as a director include: Candles in the Dark (TV, 1993), and Meine Schwester Maria (2002).
 

Genre Drama
Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 1973
Director Maximilian Schell
Screenplay Maximilian Schell
Directors of Photography Klaus Koenig, Wolfgang Treu
Producer Maximilian Schell
Production Companies Alfa Film/Glarus, MFG Film/Munich, Seitz Filmproduktion/Munich
Principal Cast Peter Hall, Ruth Hausmeister, Maximilian Schell, Gustav Rudolf Sellner, Gila von Weitershausen
Original Version German
Subtitled Versions English
Awards German Film Award 1974

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