Critic Reviews
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Brave, heartless, and exceedingly strange, a quasi-documentary in which the actor Maximilian Schell mercilessly violates the privacy of his older sister, Maria.
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| 80 |
Variety
Lael Loewenstein
A tender, achingly poignant portrait of the Austrian actress Maria Schell, My Sister Maria is a valentine from her younger brother Maximilian.
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| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
One worries from scene to scene about whether the movie is a work of experimental art or just another ruthless intrusion into the life of a dying and, to some degree, broken woman. I'm willing to bet that Maximilian fretted over this too, for the film is as tense and fractured, as alienating -- and, finally, touching -- a work as it undoubtedly ought to be.
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| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Maximilian stresses that Maria was an icon in postwar Germany, yet the saddest thing about her isolation and disappointment is that it's so common.
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| 63 |
Boston Globe
Artful, especially in the ways it avoids sentimentality and employs vintage film clips of truly riveting performances...But Maximilian's narcissistic examination of his theatrical family -- can be boring, and his creative license with the truth is kind of troubling.
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| 60 |
Washington Post
A heartfelt but eccentric, pseudo-documentary tribute to his sister Maria.
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| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In many ways this is an extraordinary movie: there's probably never been such a portrait of a major star in the grip of old age.
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| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
Intrusive, excessively brooding and narcissistic.
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| 20 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Deeply personal and deeply silly.
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