From naturalistic despair to truly unnerving animal grimace in a moment, she is stunning as the vampire's helpless victim who can do nothing as she feels her soul slipping away.
Schmitz was highly regarded in German cinema. You can watch her on Netflix in the Nazi propaganda film Titanic, in which the fault of the disaster is laid firmly at the door of "Britain's endless quest for profit." Regardless, the film was ultimately banned by Goebbels, who felt the panic of the crowd scenes as the ship was going down might lower the morale of dem Volke. (The filming was so troubled that its initial director was not just fired, but hanged.)
After the War, Schmitz was shunned by the film community for her Nazi collaboration, and she slipped into a shadow-existence of drugs and despair, inspiring Fassbinder's classic Veronika Voss.
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