Das Sacher. In bester Gesellschaft

I have only seen the first part of this two part TV-film, but as nobody has written a review yet I will be the first. I live in Vienna and know the hotel Sacher quite well, so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately the film tells very little about Anna Sacher, the legendary director of the hotel, and concentrates on some rather uninteresting fictional characters: a editor couple from Berlin and an Austrian count and his wife who is a secret writer. In between is the weird story about a girl who is kept as a prisoner in the cellar of the opera - a mixture of the Phantom of the Opera and the story of Natascha Kampusch.

I was glad that on the same evening the Austrian television showed the documentary film "The queen of Vienna" about Anna Sacher, who was indeed a fascinating person. A butcher's daughter who after a long struggle becomes the first female director of a European top hotel. A close friend of the high-society and the cultural world when Vienna was one most of the most thrilling places in the world, a pioneer of equal treatment for women and a sworn enemy of Vienna's notorious antisemitic mayor Karl Lueger. Even Anna Sacher's personal was full of drama. As her great love was already married she made her daughter of fifteen marry his son. When she was 20 this daughter committed suicide.

I was not very enthusiastic about the actors either. Ursula Strauss has very little in common with of the real Anna Sacher and Nina Proll plays the imperial mistress Katherina Schratt like a cheap slut. I can't understand how Robert Dornhelm could make such a bad film about such a good theme.

So why only 6 stars- there were flaws- and the reviewer (3 star) from Vienna familiar with the hotel and the history & life of Anna Sacher makes some important points. Without giving any spoiler, if you don't know, as I don't, makes it clear that she was very significant, one of the 1st feminist, fought anti-Semitism, and had a very interesting story. (there is a German Doc). I did feel at times, that the 3 (to6) main story lines, some of the characters were pretty self indulgent, maybe true of the society, but it makes it hard to be involved with all the details of their story line. How real are these characters. Sometimes, I had to say, really, what.... But it was a very excellent production. At the end touched on WWI, showed some of the horrors, and that everyone wasn't for it (well, it is a German production) and the chaos and poverty that followed it, but not at the Sacher Luxury Hotel. There was more about marriages, and the social political structure in the society. And woman fighting for a voice (still going on 100-120 years later). It looks like they could pick up with a 3 &4. It might be hard to move forward bec by the end of WW1, where this leaves off, within 10 years you have the rise of Fascism, and by 1934 you have Hitler in power, and Triumph of the Will Rally. But I wouldn't mind seeing it from the beginning, with a focus on Anna Sacher, a few other minor story lines. The characters in this 1&2 could be present, but not focus on their stories. there seems to be a lot known about her; why not her interaction with the anti-semite mayor she fought, That a lot is known, can also be a draw back in a drama based on real people, bec it may fail to deliver. I see there was a Hotel Sacher made in 1939 that would be interesting-(available?) and one in the 70s.