Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress

The Austrian empress enjoys traveling trough Hungary, where she ultimately finds the politically priceless affection of local count Andrassy too intimate, but it’s only temporary relief from the frustrations of court life in Vienna, where dutiful Franz remains chained to his desk and leaves his chillingly strict mother Sophie interfering, even in the upbringing of their daughter. When Sissi is diagnosed with plausibly fatal tuberculosis and Franz has to allow Sophie to remove their daughter on doctor’s warning, Sissi is in danger of losing the will to live while exiled to recovery-inducing climates (Portuguese Madeira and Greek Corfu). Then desperately needed psycho-somatic therapy appears in the form of her indestructibly positive mother Ludovika of Bavaria, who lovingly nurses both her sickness and her taste for life on idyllic walks. Once again Oberst Böckl, the clumsy body-guard whose doting admiration for the empress borders on the improper, provides a comical note, as each time Sissi moves he struggles with the local language and falls in love with his private teacher. Finally she is well enough to rejoin her husband on an official visit to Venice, part of Austrias remaining possessions in Northern Italy, where nationalism prepares the Habsburg sovereigns a hostile welcome which may even start a violent uprising, but the emotional Italians melt for the ostentatiously loving reunion of mother and daughter on St. Mark’s square. —IMDb