Forever My Love
Directed by Ernst Marischka
Written by Ernst Marischka
1962/Austria
Erma-Film
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898) was Empress of Austria by marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I. Born into the royal Bavarian house of Wittelsbach, Elisabeth (also called “Sisi”) enjoyed an informal upbringing before marrying at the age of sixteen. The marriage thrust her into the much more formal Habsburg court life, for which she was unprepared and which she found uncongenial. She came to develop a deep kinship with Hungary, and helped to bring about the dual monarchy of Austria–Hungary in 1867. The death of her only son Rudolf, and his mistress Mary Vetsera, in a murder–suicide tragedy at his hunting lodge at Mayerling was a blow from which Elisabeth never recovered. While travelling in Geneva in 1898, she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni. — Wikipedia [/box]
This is a compilation of three films starring Romy Schneider and Karl Boehm about the romance between Emperor Franz Joseph and “Sissi”, who became his empress. We follow their brief courtship, Sissi’s many run-ins with her mother-in-law, and Sissi’s role in easing tensions with Hungary and Italy. Judging from the Wikipedia biography, the story was highly fictionalized.
This is OK as lavish storybook love stories go. The costumes and scenery are truly grand. It didn’t make me want to go back and see the original three but I think it suffered in compilation. For one thing, the ending kind of comes out of nowhere. I watched a dubbed version.
I know it’s not the missing title tune, but this is the one became an earworm after watching this movie.
