In a special sneak preview on Thursday, March 10 at 7 p.m., the Malibu Film Society (MFS) will screen “Remember” a day before its official release in U.S. theaters. The film’s co-star, Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau, will be on hand afterwards for an audience Q&A.
“Remember” is a highly unusual film starring two octogenarians — Martin Landau, 87, and Christopher Plummer, 86. Both men play nursing home residents who survived the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. Landau’s character, a former Nazi hunter, knows that the guard who murdered Plummer’s family during World War II is living in the U.S. under a false identity.
The two men decide to work together as a team to find the former Nazi guard and seek revenge. Landau’s character is mentally sharp but physically weak, while Plummer’s character is physically sound but has some dementia. Plummer sets off to find his target, staying in close contact with Landau. The film has a surprise ending.
“No one I know has yet guessed the ending,” Landau said in a phone interview with The Malibu Times. “I just like the movie a lot, and I’m glad it’s resonating as well as it is with people. A movie like this can’t be made in 10 years because there won’t be an audience for it, or anyone old enough to play the parts. It’s a well-made, entertaining and adventurous film, and it deserves to be seen.”
Landau, who grew up Jewish in Brooklyn, said his own Austrian-born father “managed to get some of his cousins, uncles and other relatives out of Germany, Austria and Poland in the late ’30s” before it was too late, and that made an impression on him.
His long acting career began in the ’50s on Broadway, along with guest acting appearances on various TV shows until he landed his first big film role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” (1959).
In his early days of acting, Landau said he almost never played a Jew, but was often cast “as a Hispanic or Native American (like a Sioux or Apache)” on shows like “Bonanza” and “The Rifleman.”
Landau lived in Malibu from 1959 to 1961 in a house that he rented from Will Rogers, Jr., located between Paradise Cove and Geoffrey’s. However, he left town after accepting a role in “Cleopatra” (1963), starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, which took him on location shooting for one year. He never made it back to live in Malibu, although he still enjoys visiting.
Although primarily a film actor, Landau may actually be best known by the public for starring in the first three seasons of TV’s “Mission: Impossible,” which aired beginning in 1966, and also starred his then wife, Barbara Bain. The TV series was the inspiration for the highly successful “Mission: Impossible” series of six films starring Tom Cruise (1996 to present).
Landau’s distinguished movie career includes an Oscar win for best supporting actor in “Ed Wood” (1994) and nominations for best supporting actor in Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989) and “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” (1988).
In his later years, Landau has gotten back to his Jewish roots by narrating and appearing in several documentaries made by the Simon Wiesenthal Center films division, including “Echoes that Remain,” “The Long Way Home” and “Shanghai Ghetto.”
“The thing that’s wonderful is that I’m still working,” Landau said.
After “Remember” wrapped, he went on to work on two other film projects, including one with actor Paul Sorvino. Before “Remember,” he had a part in the “Entourage” movie.
Landau is also quite active as artistic co-director of Actors Studio West — the West Coast branch of the famed New York Actors Studio.
He says “Remember” is a “damn good movie” and that in the screenings he’s been to so far, “audiences love it.”
For more information about the screening of “Remember,” visit malibufilmsociety.org.
