He began directing films in 1970. Schmid's many credits include the 1984 documentary Il bacio di Tosca ("Tosca's Kiss") about aging opera singers who live together in a special retirement home for musicians and reminisce about their lives and careers. He also appeared in front of the camera in several movies, including works by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Patrice Ch_reau and Hans-J‹rgen Syberberg and, as the character Samuel Ingraham, in the 1977 Wim Wenders film The American Friend.

He was also an opera director and staged several productions at the Grand Th_ê¢tre in Geneva and Zurich's Opernhaus, among them Bellini'sI puritani and Beatrice di Tenda, Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, Verdi's Il trovatore and Berg's Lulu.

In 1999, Schmid received a lifetime achievement award at the Locarno International Film Festival. Organizers for this year's festival, which is currently under way, planned to show Tosca's Kiss in the grand square of this southern Swiss town last Sunday evening (August 6) as a tribute to Schmid, according to the Associated Press.