Sissi – Die junge Kaiserin (1956) - film review

Austria in the mid-1850s.  After her marriage to Kaiser Franz Josef, the Princess Elisabeth, known to her nearest and dearest as Sissi, struggles to adjust to her new role as Empress of Austria.  Whilst her husband and most loyal subjects are willing to overlook her lapses of etiquette, her mother-in-law, the Archduchess Sophie, is less generous and soon makes herself Elisabeth’s enemy.  The Empress is delighted when she finds she is pregnant, and her beloved Franz shares her joy.  But once the baby is born, the mean-spirited Archduchess takes it from Sissi and insists that she takes charge of the child’s education, so that the Empress can devote herself to her imperial duties.  When Franz takes his mother’s side, Sissi feels betrayed and decides she must return to her home in Bavaria...

Sissi: The Young Empress (a.k.a. Sissi - Die junge Kaiserin or Sissi impératrice) was the second of three films directed by the distinguished Austrian filmmaker Ernst Marischka in the 1950s which followed the early life of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, intimately known as Sissi.  The central role of Sissi went to a virtually unknown 17-year-old named Romy Schneider who had previously starred in a similar historical romance, Mädchenjahre einer Königin (1954), also directed by Marischka.  It was through Sissi that Schneider became a household name in Austria and Germany and was subsequently able to pursue an international career after her breakthrough into French cinema in the early 1960s.  Despite the fame that Sissi brought her, Romy Schneider later resented her association with the fairytale princess (which was how the young Empress Elisabeth was portrayed in the films) and found it virtually impossible to escape from her shadow.  Even today, the names Romy and Sissi are pretty well synonymous, and the reason for this is self-evident.  Scheinder is so perfectly suited to the role that it is hard to imagine her in any other.

Playing opposite Romy Schneider is another fine Austrian actor (and heartthrob), Karlheinz Böhm, son of the conductor Karl Böhm.  Whilst Böhm is best known to the English-speaking world for his chilling portrayal of the psychopath in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) he is most famous in his native Austria for playing Kaiser Franz Josef in the three Sissi films.  Böhm is just as elegantly well-suited to his role as Romy Schneider is to hers, and you can hardly imagine a more photogenic and well-matched screen couple.   The excellent supporting cast includes Magda Schneider - who better for the role of Sissi’s mother than the real-life mother of the actress playing her? - and Vilma Degischer, who is superb as the seemingly cold-hearted Archduchess Sophie.

Whilst the Sissi films are sometimes dismissed as anodyne and a little dated, they remain highly popular and provide a fairly good example of Austrian cinema in the 1950s.  The flatness of some of the characterisation is unfortunately exacerbated by Ernst Marischka’s reluctance to take any risks with his mise-en-scène, but these faults are countered by the films’ lavish production values and the highly engaging performance from the lead players.  The main interest of Sissi: The Young Empress is the conflict between individuality and social responsibility, a theme that is just as relevant today as it was when the film was made.  The subtly feminist subtext is as evident here as it is in the other Sissi films - notice how most of the male characters are portrayed as weak, comical or indecisive, whilst the female characters are (without exception) shown to be of sterner stuff.   The young Empress Elisabeth may appear to be a fairytale princess but it soon becomes painfully evident that she belongs to a world in which women are expected to make great sacrifices.  Despite Romy Schneider’s later reservations over the role, Sissi is a strong and complex individual whose personal crises are easily identified with, although it is unquestionably the charm and humanity that the actress invests in the character that have ensured her longevity.

© James Travers 2012

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