The fleeting nature of love and the emptiness lying just beneath the surface of glamour are natural subjects for Max Ophuls. In this film, as in his later masterpieces, Ophuls relishes in the absurd while delighting in the elegance of court life-and his own camerawork. The story concerns the love affair of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand (played by the American John Cabot Lodge) and Czech Countess Sophie Chotek (Edwige Feuillere), who marry against the wishes of the Court and are later assassinated at Sarajevo.
"Ophul's technique is never less than dazzling. His camera is never still and he has a predilection for choosing settings that demand a maximum of movement (such as staircases).... The patterns of construction in his films reflect Ophuls's conception of society as a spectacle scarcely concealing...a frenzied pursuit of hollow enjoyment...." --Roy Arnes, "French Film."
Ophuls, who had left his native Germany for France when Hitler came to power, was again uprooted in 1939 with the fall of France; he had barely time to finish De Mayerling à Sarajevo before leaving for America. In Hollywood, he made A Letter from an Unknown Woman and Caught, and returned to France in the early Fifties to make what are now considered his greatest works, including Lola Montes and The Earrings of Madame de....