A remake of Maurice Tourneur's eponymous movie of the late thirties,"Katia" is ,like its predecessor ,a harmless charming movie.Romy Schneider is gorgeous,Curd Jurgens ,a credible czar;the cast also includes earnest thespians Monique Mélinand as the unfortunate empress and Chabrol's future favorite Michel Bouquet as an anarchist.
French lefty critics were very hard on "katia" when it was released."The 1959 cinematographic season" slagged it off,calling it " a committed work" (but in the wrong sense of the term),which praised tsarism.Such opinions seem irrelevant today."Katia" is to Russia what "Sissi " was to Austria: a nice fairytale,probably not very historically accurate,but who cares?
French lefty critics were very hard on "katia" when it was released."The 1959 cinematographic season" slagged it off,calling it " a committed work" (but in the wrong sense of the term),which praised tsarism.Such opinions seem irrelevant today."Katia" is to Russia what "Sissi " was to Austria: a nice fairytale,probably not very historically accurate,but who cares?