Sissi: The Young Empress

Elisabeth is empress of Austria now, and the court does not care for her. Her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, controls protocol, takes her child away from her and decides even how the young woman is to walk. Elisabeth is suffocating. Relief comes from an unlikely place: Hungary. There she feels wanted, and she walks into the political knot between Vienna and Budapest. This is the second film of the trilogy and darker than the first. The love story sits at the back; what is in front is a woman with no authority over her own life. The film says this in the language of melodrama but does not soften it, and the struggle between Sophie and Elisabeth is its real conflict. Ernst Marischka wrote and directed. Romy Schneider plays Elisabeth, Karlheinz Bohm plays Franz Josef and Vilma Degischer plays Archduchess Sophie. The palaces, the clothes and the scenery are the selling point. In postwar Europe that kind of visual abundance filled cinemas, and the trilogy became one of the most watched things on the continent. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic costume melodrama and Romy Schneider. Who it is not for: anyone looking for history. The film sweetens the Habsburgs considerably, simplifies the Hungarian question, and never touches the darkness of Elisabeth's later life.