Just perfect...

best movie i've ever seen.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Blistering performances.

Forget all the mush for a moment (and what a mushy film this is!) and bear in mind that we are in Germany just ten years after the war. Well, we are in Austria, but the references (and the actors) are all very clearly pan-German. Indeed, with settings in Bavaria and Austria, we are very precisely in the homeland of one Herr Adolf Hitler. By a happy coincidence the same Haydn melody was used for the Austrian national anthem (played at Sissi's arrival in Austria) before the First World War as was adopted for the German national anthem after the First World War and which was still in use (in Germany) in 1955 and is of course still in use today.While Germany itself was in a state of unresolved guilt combined with intense denial, Austria, as is often pointed out, had neatly evaded all "denazification" after the war. As such it became a sort of alibi-country for the German world. The Marischka brothers, Hubert and Ernest (who directs these films) were very Vienna and had always been more operetta and waltz music than sturm und drang and blut und boden - the acceptable if frivolous side of Germanic culture.When Werner Krauss, great actor but notorious anti-semite, was unable to work in Germany, he moved to Austria, took Austrian citizenship and continued his career until rehabilitated and restored to his German citizenship in 1951. He was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (German "order of merit")just the year before this film came out and, on his death in 1959 the Iffland-Ring (traditionally held by the finest living German actor)passed not as expected to Oskar Werner (a noted anti-Nazi ) but to another Austrian, Josef Meinrad whose comic major in the Sissi films is amongst his most notable film appearances.Magda Schneider, for her part, lived on in Bechtesgarten where she had been Hitler's neighbour, friend and favourite actress. Romy, herself too young to have been involved in "you know what", trod gingerly in her mother's footsteps she would for instance play the same part as her mother had played in Christine in 1957, a remake of Max Ophül's 1933 Lorelei). Unlike her mother, she was Austrian born (Vienna) so was the perfect representative both of a continuity with pre-war Germany and of an innocent new generation, uninvolved in the awkward bit that came in between.The same might be said of Karlheinz Böhm whose father, the conductor Karl Böhm, has publicly welcomed Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938 and conducted the concert given on the occasion. He has himself, it should be said, been a notable philanthropist as well as appearing (to is cost) in one of the most remarkable and disturbing films ever made about the father-son relationship - Michael Powell's Pepping Tom.While fifties Germany avoided the spectacular in cinema and specialised in the "heimatfilm", celebrations of all those good, old-fashioned German virtues that could not be mistaken for Nazism, Austria was the perfect place to produce a kind of postwar pan-Germanic epic that is rather like a glorified version of the heimatfilm (hunting and fishing, Bavarian beer and skittles).Historical verity has necessarily to take a back seat so that the portrayal of this part at any rate of the Germanic world can be seen as entirely sympathetic and all the reverse of "you know what". Franz Josef was a deeply conservative ruler who ferociously oppressed all opposition and the Austro-Hungarian state in reality had a secret police that were worthy predecessors of the Gestapo, but not in this film. Here Franz Josef is a charming, well-meaning fellow and Herr Meinrad's policemen are just a version of the Keystone Kops.Do not get me wrong. I am not blaming Germans for wanting to make films like this. They had a ghastly reality to live with and live down and, As D. H. Lawrence once famously remarked, we have to go on however many skies have fallen. One can even enjoy the mush but it is as well to understand, at the same time, that it represented a kind of exercise in camouflage.

Written and directed by Ernst Marischka, 1950's Austrian Sissi trilogy is charming fairytale about 19th century Bavarian princess Elisabeth or Sissi (Romy Schneider), who became wife of Empress Franz Joseph I (Karlheinz Böhm). Sensuous colours make dresses, sets and landscapes look gorgeous, and if what-really-happened-realism is replaced with what-should-have-been-fairytale, the story is enjoyable... just like fairytale. The films made Schneider a star but type-casted her, too. (Side-note: Sissi's mother was played by her real-life mother, Magda Schneider, who had been part of Hitler's social circle, and Böhm's career was later destroyed by 1960 British horror flick Peeping Tom.) Denying of crap? Great, I prefer roses!

I have seen this movie 3 years ago from the SBS TV channel in Australia. I really like this movie and also the other 2 movies Sissi 2 & Sissi 3. This story covers love, the obstacles to becoming Empress, the stumbles of the relationship with her mother-in-law and there are also some comedy scenes and funny conversations in all of the movies Sissi 1-3. Lucky me, I have seen this movie (3 of them) with English subtitles and German language, so for me this presentation is a more valuable experience to see. The DVD box set of the movie Sissi can be bought online from www.ezydvd.com.au. The presentation of the movie from that DVD box set includes original German language and English subtitles.

I have seen these films over and over again, probably already more than fifty times. This is the first of a series of three Austrian films, produced in 1954 ("Sissi"), 1955 ("Sissi-die junge Kaiserin") and 1956 ("Sissi-Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin"), directed by Ernst Marishka, and are the epitome of total kitsch and enormously campy. I know that these films are almost unknown outside of continental Europe, but still, they are worth seeing! Played by a very young Romy Schneider - a role that stuck to her, much to her chagrin in later years. The trilogy is about the life of the Austrian Empress and Hungarian Queen Elizabeth (1837-1898) - or "Sissi" - in the first years of her marriage to the Austrian Emperor and 'Apostolic' King of Hungary Franz-Joseph I (1830-1916) - played by Karl-Heinz Böhm. Although the writers did fib frightfully with the historical truths (read for those "Elisabeth", the biography written by Brigitte Hamann), still, the sugar sweetness, the crinolines, the music and the grandeur of the scenes is breathtaking. However, my favourite character in the film is "Sissi's" mother-in-law, archduchess Sophie, played very ably by Vilma Degischer. Sophie is portrayed as a complete bitch of a woman (which in reality she was, after she managed to save the Habsburg monarchy single-handedly from the revolutionary mobs in 1848), something Joan Collins would be able to take lessons from... My most favourite scene is the closing scene of the third movie: "E viva la mama!" - where Sissi is reunited with her daughter on Venice's Piazza San Marco. Watch it, and have lots of handkerchiefs ready for use (if you're a closeted romantic like myself, that is!).