'' (1970) Schneider continued to work in France during the 1970s, most notably with director
Claude Sautet on five films. Their first collaboration,
The Things of Life (
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 (
Max and the Junkmen, 1971), and she appeared with
Yves Montand in Sautet's
César et Rosalie (1972). Schneider portrayed a more mature and realistic Elisabeth of Austria in
Ludwig (1973), Visconti's film about the life of King
Ludwig II of Bavaria. "Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal", Schneider once said.
Paris Match wrote in 1971: "Forty years after
Greta and
Marlene, fifteen years after
Marilyn, the screen again has a great star." Other successes from this period included
Le Train (1973),
Claude Chabrol's thriller
Innocents with Dirty Hands (
Les innocents aux mains sales, 1975) with
Rod Steiger, and
Le vieux fusil (1975). The gritty
That Most Important Thing: Love (''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
A Simple Story (
Une histoire simple, 1978). On 30 October 1974, Schneider was the second guest on
Dietmar Schönherr's talk show ''
(The Later the Evening'') when she, after a rather terse interview, remarked passionately to the last guest, bank robber and author
Burkhard Driest: "Sie gefallen mir. Sie gefallen mir sehr." (I like you. I like you a lot.) U.S. filmmaker
Michael Cimino wanted Schneider to star as the female lead in his political love story
Perfect Strangers. She would have starred alongside
Roy Scheider and
Oskar Werner. The film, however, was ultimately cancelled after several weeks of pre-production shooting because of "political machinations". She also acted in
The Infernal Trio (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). Negotiations broke down when he called Schneider a "dumb cow", to which she responded by declaring she would never work with such a "beast". Fassbinder cast
Hanna Schygulla instead, reviving his professional association with an actress to whom he had likewise been offensive. ==Personal life==