Sissi face à son destin

The final film in the Sissi trilogy - The Fateful Years of the Empress -- again stars Romy Schneider as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. These films are beloved by the European public, just as some of the Disney films we saw as children are to us.

As far as history goes, the movies are not very accurate, though they do show real events. Sissi and her husband are portrayed as very much in love, a very romantic couple, although that was not true. Also, for the purposes of this film, their daughter Sophie actually lives, and there aren't any other children. Actually the whole end of this film in Venice, in history, took place much later in Sissi's life, and her son Ludwig was present.

One interesting fact is that, as in the film, Sissi's brother married the actress Henriette Mendel, and she was made a Baroness. Their illegitimate daughter, who appears as a character in the movie, becomes Marie Larish. Marie Larish was the go-between for Elisabeth's son Ludwig and his fiancé Mary. After the Mayerling scandal, when Ludwig shoots Mary and then himself, it was learned that Marie served as go-between, and the family, including her close companion Sissi, completely disowned her.

During the time that Sissi spends in Hungary, there were rumors that Count Andrassy was her lover, but this was never proved. The film is so whitewashed that a liaison would never have occurred to Sissi. Sissi does become very ill -- they suspect tuberculosis -- and is sent to Madeira to recover. However, it is believed that her condition was very much psychosomatic -- she really didn't like being at the palace -- because, unlike in the film, when she arrived in Madeira, she had a miraculous recovery. In the film, she remains ill until her mother arrives and gets her walking, etc.

This film ends with the Emperor and Empress' triumphant appearance in Venice. Marischka planned on doing a fourth film, but Romy Schneider refused, turning down one million Deutschemarks. Schneider would become Elisabeth once more, in 1972, in the film Ludwig, playing the character closer to the real Sissi.

The costumes, the scenery, the pageantry in this film is spectacular. Romy Schneider is fresh and beautiful and luminous as Empress Elisabeth, not at all the dark, anorexic character described in history as time went on.

Sissi's end was tragic, as was Schneider's, but Europeans, so beaten down by war, were in the mood for something beautiful, and they got it with the Sissi films. She is such a beloved character there, like Princess Diana, audiences loved this view of her life.

To be enjoyed as a real feast for the eyes.

Like the first two Marischka movies ,and although nobody sings in these movies,they are closer to operetta than to cinema.Maudlin and syrupy to a fault,they nonetheless retain a kitsch charm.I must confess I love this exponentional schmaltz.History is given a rough ride,this is an euphemism,although most of the events that are depicted here did happen: Sissi's brother did marry an actress, a misalliance,and the adorable little girl whom Sissi's mother pampers would later be Marie Larish who would play a despicable prominent part in the Mayerling tragedy.The Hungarian part would occur later in Sissi's life,(her son Rudolf was present) and Andrassy's flame was purely fictional.

While watching such candid pictures ,listening to lessons in wisdom and kindness,we almost forget that Sissi's fate was in fact a very dark one,and that her husband was still here when WW1 broke out.Afgacolor pictures are delightful and the ending is guaranteed to make the impressionable use two boxes of Kleenex.

Romy Schneider made a volte face after Sissi the third.She turned down a one million marks offer,and despite her mother Magda -who plays her fictional mother and who was the star of Max Ophuls's "liebelei",left for broader horizons:she was to meet Visconti and Welles at the beginning of the sixties.A far cry from Sissi.She played "Sissi " again in 1972 in Viconti's "Ludwig" and she used to say that the Italian master was the only one who showed Elizabeth as she was.

But Sissi is a dear memory ,particularly if you saw it when you were a child.You remember it like some kind of fairy tale in some faraway magic kingdom where every dream can come true.Or something like that.

The last of the three Sissi movies continues with the idealized version of her story. Just like in Disneyland, no one ever ages and all ends well. This third film shows events that probably did happen sometime during her 45 years on the Austrian throne, but by now the overall story can only be called fiction. The second movie ended with the coronation of Sissi and Franz Josef as King and Queen of Hungary. That happened in 1867. By that time, Sissi gave birth to three children - Sophie in 1855, Gisela in 1856, and Rudolf in 1858. Her firstborn Sophie died in 1857. A fourth child, a daughter, was born in 1868. Yet this third film, presumably a continuation of the second film, shows the imperial couple visiting Venice, which happened in 1856, and shows only one child, a girl, who appears to be about 4. So the chronology is obviously all wrong here. While the illness she suffers from in this movie is based on fact, Sissie should have aged in the movie about two decades by the time these events were presented. I gave this movie a relatively low mark because of the many historical inaccuracies and omissions. In spite of these shortcomings, I still enjoyed the movie. This third movie includes some breathtaking scenery of the Mediterranean coastline, and the Venice visits appears to have been shot on location. One almost feels like a part of the crowd. Franz Josef likewise seems to be forever young and is not shown with the facial hair that distinguished him for most of his reign. He already sported the beard and mustache by the time he was crowned King of Hungary in 1867, so he should have had the facial hair already by the end of the second movie and throughout the entire third movie. But that would probably spoil the Prince Charming image the film makers were aiming for. This movie should be viewed more as a fairy tale that is loosely based on the life of the imperial Austrian family. It is not an historically accurate portrayal of their life story.

Very nice third part of the trilogy left me in tears throughout the viewing. Poor Sissy!!! And all that romance and the beauty made me just feel o so sad that there never was no fourth part to the series. With love,

In reviews of the two earlier Sissi films I have already pointed out that the historical interest of the films is to be found in their relation to fifties Germany (pan-Germany) rather than to the rather slender connection with the real history of pre-First World War Austro-Hungary. I shall not repeat those arguments here.

There is a curious "truth" game played in one of the films of Fassbinder where the characters determine who is intended by asking such questions as "What would s/he be if he were a tree" etc The last question (the killer) is "What would s/he have been during the Third Reich?" Fassbinder was one of the few West German film-makers to resolutely explore the old wound. The Austrian Marischka is at the furthest extreme, creating this really quite extraordinary fairy-tale epic which is, by careful design, light years away from the terrible "you know what", the unmentionable (like tuberculosis in this film), that most Germans now preferred to cast into oblivion.

There is not very strong evidence for Sissi suffering from tuberculosis, although it was apparently at one time suspected, but the "white plague" was quite an important issue in the late forties and fifties (on the increase in the aftermath of the war) although it was in fact to be the decade when the disease was at least temporarily mastered. Germany, like Sissi, might hope for a complete cure.

1957 was the comeback year for Veit Harlan (best known for the anti-semitic wartime classic Jud Süss. After somehow battling through to an acquittal in the courts, Harlan produced the film Anders als du und ich, a rather daring film about homosexuality, picking up a theme common in pre-Hitler Weimar. Harlan's film was also known as "the third sex", a term coined in the twenties by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (openly gay and Jewish), and similarly used as an alternative title both for Oswald's Anders als die Andern 1919 (in which Hirschfield himself appears) and for Dreyer's Mikaël (1924). Sadly for Harlan, his reputation was against him and the film met with demonstrations accusing him inter alia, and rather justly, of being anti-homosexual, although it is true that the film was more timid and conservative on the subject than its Weimar predecessors.

Harlan could not call for this film on his former wartime collaborator, art director Bruno Mondi, for the very good reason that Mondi had his hands full as art director for the Sissi trilogy.

The pan-Germanic theme continues in the third part of Sissi, to extend beyond Germany (represented by Sissi's native Bavaria), Austria and Hungary to include Italy - a perfect representation of Mitteleuropa, the maintenance of whose cultural imperium has throughout the trilogy been seen as Sissi's peculiar "destiny" = "order, peace, happiness, contentment" (order, typically still comes first)

It is a sad irony of history that, had Hitler had a more generous conception of the Volkdeutsche, he might have been the champion of European Jewry (Ashkenazis throughout Europe were German speaking and very largely of German culture). In this film history is put right to a certain extent - but rather coyly. Not only do we see the Hungarian gypsies again, as in the second film but Sissi's brother marries .....an actress...and a bourgeoise(who just happens to have the Yiddish surname Mendel).

Quite where this fairy-tale land benevolently dominated by the Volkdeutsche would have extended in the projected fourth part of Sissi, we cannot know. Von der Etsch bis an den Belt no doubt. What words, one wonders, did the German audience mutter to themselves as the Haydn music played (as it had in each part of the trilogy) at the climax of the film?

The two charming puppets (Romy and Karlheinz) rebelled. For the special relevance of these two performers (both "innocent" children of parents prominently and ostentatiously, if relatively frivolously, known for their support of Hitler - Magda Schneider, who of course appears as the mother in the films and the conductor Karl Böhm).

Schneider's unwillingness (despite her mother) to continue the masquerade is well known but I do not doubt that the feeling was shared by Karlheinz. Both marked their rebellion by a career-change, although in Romy's case this involved battling with her mother rather as Sissi battles with the mother-in-law in the trilogy. After agreeing to play the same part as her mother had played in the film Christine (a remake of Ophüls 1933 Liebelei), she broke the umbilical cord by running off with her co-star Alain Delon.

As for Karlheinz he would appear, at great cost to his career, in the remarkable but disturbing film Peeping Tom (1960) made by the British director Michael Powell. The appearance of a German actor in the principal role is totally anomalous but may well be explained by the fact that the films is crucially concerned with the effect of a child growing up with a famous but grimly obsessive father (played by Powell himself in the film). If he never became a major star, the younger Böhm would nevertheless on the whole make a success of what might be described as his personal quest for rehabilitation, becoming a left-wing activist in the sixties and later a noted philanthropist and appearing in the seventies in the films of Fassbinder (as a homosexual in one and a communist in the other).

For Romy Schneider, the road was far more difficult and, despite a period of great fame, would end with her suicide in 1982 at the age of forty-three. She had given both her children markedly Jewish names (David and Sarah) and was buried with a star of David around her neck.

Escapism no doubt has its place but there is still no better antidote to a troubled past than facing it honestly.