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 of 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 Feuillère), who marry against the wishes of the Court and are later assassinated at Sarajevo.
Robin Wood comments: “De Mayerling à Sarajevo is not only among the most neglected, but among the finest, works of Max Ophuls, who is at last becoming widely recognized as one of the great masters of film. For decades, in the male-dominated criticism of a male-dominated cinema, it was de rigueur to regard his films as merely ‘decorative': they did not address ‘social problems.' But in those days the oppression of women was not a ‘social problem': a ‘social problem' was, by definition, one that could be resolved within the existing (patriarchal) social structures. Ophuls' films not only express what our culture regards as a ‘feminine' sensibility (the valuing of qualities such as tenderness, grace and sensitivity above the supposedly ‘manly' attributes): they invariably dramatize the director's identification with the woman's position. De Mayerling à Sarajevo is of particular importance in its explicit extension of the Ophulsian viewpoint to the world of politics: while its consciously defined political position falls within the bounds of progressive liberalism (its lovers are destroyed by a pincer-movement of reactionary and revolutionary forces), its vision of love as in itself a revolutionary force is far more radical.”