This umpteenth documentary about Romy Scneider's tragical fate does not bring anything really new.Even the last segment which deals with Romy's childhood and her mother's and Hitler's relationship were already told in another documentary .The choice of the extracts of the movies is sometimes brilliant (much time is given over to "Ludwig" with a fascinating interview with an aged Helmut Berger),sometimes debatable ("L Important C'Est D'Aimer" is IMHO one of the most pretentious French movies ever made" ,sometimes eminently reprehensible (Leonard Keigel 's "Qui" is one of the worst -well it might be the worst - Romy ever made !and they show at least three extracts!!!)Besides "Ludwig" ,good movies are mentioned : Orson Welles '"the trial" Claude Sautet's "Max Et LES Ferraillleurs" and "Les Choses De La Vie " and Bertrand Tavernier's "death watch" (a dying woman is filmed during the last days of her life ).
Like it or not,the Marischka trilogy should not have been passed over in silence in a Schneider biography because it launched her career and her myth was built around this empress character;even today in Vienna ,Sissi is the main attraction ,and along with Mozart,the biggest "seller" :ashtrays ,tea cups ,post cards ,chocolate boxes ,her face is everywhere and the fact that the three movies are screened every Christmas in Germany,Austria ...and in France speaks volumes about the popularity of the empress;Schneider and Sissi are for lots of people the same character :the documentary tells about the scene in the Sacher,Vienna 's most famous restaurant where the actress is welcomed as "our Sissi",all the same!
Schneider hated this role ,particularly in the last decade of her too brief career,and she did something about it with "scandalous" movies such as "Trio Infernal" or "L' Important....".It would have been exciting -all the more exciting since the documentary uses the split screen- to show simultaneously sequences from "Sissi ,die Junge Kaiserin" and" Trio Infernal" !
Much time is given over to "Christine " which was a watered-down remake of Ophuls' "Liebelei" starring her own mother Magda who was one of Hitler's favorite actresses -see above-;during the shooting she fell in love with Alain Delon.
When Delon was awarded a prize in Germany ,he dedicated it to Romy but some people pulled a long face :didn't he steal the actress from her native country?Even today ,Germans resent Romy being buried in a small French village .Which does not matter much any more anyway:Romy was one of the best European actresses of the last century.
