From Mayerling to Sarajevo

In this film about the love affair of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (John Lodge) and Czech Countess Sophie Chotek (Edwige Feuillère), who marry against the wishes of the court and are later assassinated at Sarajevo, Max Ophuls relishes the absurdity while delighting in the elegance of court life—and of his own camerawork, fluidity describing a rigorous repression. Robin Wood called the film “not only among the most neglected, but among the finest, works of Max Ophuls . . . [It is] of particular importance in its explicit extension of the Ophulsian viewpoint to the world of politics . . . [with] its vision of love as in itself a revolutionary force.”