"Mayerling" - New York Times - September 14, 1937
- Review by Frank S. Nugent

So much depends on the viewpoint. When Maxwell Anderson contemplated the Mayerling tragedy in The Masque of Kings last season he gave scarcely more than superficial consideration to the romance between the Crown Prince Rudolph and the Baroness Marie Vetsera. What interested him more and motivated his drama was the political struggle, the clash between an impetuous liberal and an unyielding symbol of the old order. When Rudolph ultimately committed suicide over the body of his beloved Marie in the hunting lodge at Mayerling we could not feel it was all for love. There had been too many other conflicts, too many other defeats. The Vetsera affair was merely the capstone.

Mayerling, the French film version of the same puzzling affair, which moved into the reopened Filmarte Theatre last night, simplifies the tragedy by stating it in purely romantic terms. There is a suggestion of intrigue, of political maneuvering, of Rudolph's restless ambition to be something more than a court wastrel. But from the moment he meets the lovely Vetsera until that when he stands, a grief-bowed Romeo, before the still form of his Viennese Juliet, it is a love story—completely and beautifully a love story. They are the only people in their world; the rest are shadows; and when the shadows grow too black, they leave it.

It is, in my opinion, the proper approach to the almost legendary tragedy. By contrast, Mr. Anderson's play was cluttered up with fiction and brave, theatrical speeches and hollow emotions. Here, through Anatol Litvak's superb assembling of scenes and through the matchless performances of Charles Boyer as Rudolph and the unbelievably lovely Danielle Darrieux as Vetsera, we are carried breathlessly along an emotional millrace, exalted and made abject as the dramatist directed. It is impossible to remain aloof, to regard the romance dispassionately. There is no resisting the fire that players, writer, and director have struck from the screen.

An admissable objection is that the early scenes, while making a great show of illustrating the political cross-currents in the court of Franz Joseph, actually tell us nothing about the Crown Prince's interests or purposes; and, having served that doubtful end, are forgotten completely when the young Baroness Vetsera appears. They serve only to introduce Rudolph as a man consumed by stifled ambitions, distrustful, reckless, weary, and debauched. Knowing him so well, we know, too, that Vetsera, whom he meets incognito and who innocently loves him for his stricken self, is his only salvation from madness.

Claude Anet, who wrote the novel from which the film is derived, has not seen fit to complicate their romance—as Anderson did—by suggesting that Vetsera actually was hired by the Emperor to spy upon his son. There were obstacles enough in the path: the Archduchess Stephanie, whom Rudolph had married by his father's command; his inability to obtain a divorce; the objections of Franz Joseph to the continuation of their affair; the fears of Vetsera's mother and brother. Mayerling's solution to the riddle of the hunting lodge is that it was murder and suicide, by agreement. History inclines as much to that theory as to any other.

And so from France has come another great photoplay, superbly produced, poetically written—the cadence of the French is beautiful even though one does not understand it—and faultlessly played. Miss Darrieux, since lured by Universal to Hollywood, has a cameo-like perfection of feature and a limpid serenity of manner which make her portrayal of the tragic young Baroness one of the hauntingly charming performances of the year. Mr. Boyer has never been better and there are others—Suzy Prim as the Countess Larisch, Jean Dax as the Emperor, in fact all the others—who have contributed to the creation of an irresistible love story.

Directed by Anatole Litvak; written (in French, with English subtitles) by Joseph Kessel and Irma Von Cube, based on the novel Idyl's End by Claude Anet; cinematographer, Armand Thirard; edited by Henri Rust; music by Arthur Honegger; released by Pax Film. Black and white. Running time: 96 minutes.

With: Charles Boyer (Archduke Rudolph of Austria), Danielle Darrieux (Baroness Marie Vetsera), Suzy Prim (Countess Larisch), Jean Dax (Emperor Franz Joseph), Gabrielle Dorziat (Empress Elizabeth), and Debucourt (Count Taafe).

GASLIGHT is a neat discussion group led by Stephen Davis at Mr. Royal College at Calgary, Alberta. It has sort of quieted down though every so often it erupts and we're off again. October 24 and 25, 1999 were particularly inspired....My contribution on Mayerling's ghosts was preceded by articles on Find a Grave, Lola Montez, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, early supernatural films, the late Jim Morrison, and Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One." Anatol was slowly coming back to life.

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:24:32 +0300 From: cbishop(at)interlog.com (Carroll Bishop) Subject: Ghosts this week: MAYERLING and the Strauss Waltz

Hi Gaslit Ones:

I was happy to wish Johann Strauss the Younger happy birthday this morning. Gruss Gott, liebe Johann! What would we be without the Viennese waltz, especially yours? Think of that space station in 2001 A.D. without THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE DANUBE. Think of New Year's in Vienna without waltzes by the Strauss family. Think of all that eros aroused by those familiar syncopated triple-beat measures, those dizzying circles, how many little Austrian babies must have resulted? (The lullabye too is often 1-2-3, 1-2-3, maybe that's why.) And not just Austrian babies, of course.

Think of MAYERLING without Strauss waltzes and marches! I saw the original Saturday night. I've been following my own eccentric and sometimes retrograde path since Arthur Schnitzler was discussed on this list (Stephen tells me we'll read ANATOL one of these days). I saw Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT, with eyes wide open, not once but twice -- once from the husband's viewpoint, once from the wife's. I read the DREAM NOVEL (Nicole/Augustina/Alice's nightmare, where she laughs cruelly in her sleep, is a bit different in Schnitzler's novel: in her dream, her husband is crucified and on the cross watching as she is involved in an orgy of her own. In both versions he wakes her up knowing she is having a nightmare and she cries in his arms. As he later cries in hers.

For the past week I've been attending a Max Ophuls retrospective. I've seen Ophuls film adaptations of Schnitzler's LIEBELEI (early) and the marvelous LA RONDE, and countless other Ophuls films, many revolving like the Viennese waltz around loveless sex or evanescent sex, military officers in splendid huszar uniforms, the shadow of death (what do you think all those uniforms are for, just impressing pretty chicks?): war, honour, senseless duels. . These are (surprisingly) moral stories, moral films, in an age when morality isn't something a lot of people want to confess to. Odd to find out how appealing the morality of Schnitzler, Ophuls, Stanley Kubrick is right now. It's not the old morality, yet it's "old-fashioned" in its longing for deeper human meaning, expressed often by showing fashionable, selfish action and disastrous results: lavish scenery, pretty clothes, cynical betrayal, and a bad taste. Schnitzler, Ophuls, Kubrick -- they are perhaps ahead of their time, not behind it.

Enfin, the Suicide Pact at MAYERLING, the royal hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods. (Suicide pacts were fashionable in Vienna even before this famous one was carried out and somewhat hushed up. Ophuls doesn't deal with Rudolf-Marie directly, but their ghosts are there all the time, a dark precedent for a gloomy Sunday. One of the Ophuls films, FROM MAYERLING TO SARAJEVO, deals with the assassination of another Crown Prince, Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo -- the shot that started World War I. (He was allowed a morganatic marriage, since the Royal Family was afraid he might repeat Rudolf's dark pattern.)

Well, there's my haunting for you. That intense, passionate, star-crossed couple (Charles Boyer in his best part ever, with a luminous, huge-eyed young Danielle Darrieux.) And all those fiacre rides, clip clop clip clop (that's for you, Phoebe) and Strauss waltzes, _echt_ German Romanticism all awhirl. They've made new prints for video, you can now read the subtitles where once they were an undecipherable white on white. And the dialogue! -- those unforgettable lines! -- Marie (as Rudolf shouts at her, mad with drink, shame, despair): "Mon pauvre amour, comme tu souffres." Rudolf's reply: "J'ai honte, Marie." Or the Empress's speech to Marie, meeting her the first time: "Vous etes tout pres de mon coeur, Marie."

But of all the scenes, the one I like best is at the court ball to which Rudolf brings Marie. They've been given 24 hours to finish their affair, and are allowed this indulgence. Rudolf shocks everyone by introducing Marie to his Emperor father, then by opening the ball dancing with her. (A Strauss waltz, of course.) And here's the Great Moment. Rudolf's wife, making her progress through the ballroom, pauses near Marie. Men bow, ladies curtsey low. But Marie? Marie stands straight and tall, in her perfect decolletege, no bending of her swanlike neck, no humbling herself to her royal lover's wife. (I'm a democrat from America, I love this stuff. Born to it.)

I found the video in an ordinary video store (I did call first to reserve). Directed by Anatol (!) Litvak, 1936. 91 minutes. I think I told y'all once before that Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were said to have flown to Paris to see MAYERLING before he abdicated. (Rudolf was given the choice of getting rid of Marie in that final 24 hours or abdicating. In a sense he does both, in a way nobody's likely to forget. Two shots at Mayerling.)

That's my ghost story. It's obviously still a good strong haunting. Don't, for God's sake, confuse it with the later remake with Catherine Deneuve and Omar Shariff, which isn't bad but is, in comparison, pretty dull. And make sure it's in French, avec English subtitles.

Carroll