Between the Lines

This Mayerling is the third film to take the tragic deaths that shook the Habsburg monarchy in 1889 and turn them into a matinee tearfest. Mayerling III doesn't manage to jerk many tears; in fact, it is by all odds the funniest.

Consider the lines. Things aren't so good in Old Vienna. The students are rumbling; the peasants are restless. Emperor Franz-Josef (played in a triumph of miscasting by James Mason), surveys the latest student riot from the palace balcony. Line (in a tone of melancholy): "So we've come to this."

The Emperor's son Rudolf is impersonated by Omar Sharif, an Egyptian actor who plays an Austrian prince about as successfully as he played an American hood in Funny Girl. Rudolf, a wastrel who sasses his old man, takes frequent injections of morphine "for my migraines" and spends an unconscionable amount of his time with showgirls and socialists. Line (father to son): "In one respect you've always been consistent. You've disappointed me."

Small wonder Rudolf is driven into the arms of a regal young noblewoman named Maria (Catherine Deneuve). The empassioned lovers flee to Mayerling, the royal hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods, where they eventually commit joint suicide. Before he leaves, Rudolf resigns his princely inheritance by throwing his ring in the Emperor's face. Line: "So much for your Holy Roman Empire!"

Director Terence Young brings a stuffy, stilted style to the proceedings that's always good for a laugh between the lines. The players miraculously managed to keep straight faces throughout, although Miss Deneuve carries this to excess by freezing into an astonishing replica of Grace Kelly at her most glacial. As Omar moans appropriately, "I have no authority. I'm just the puppet prince." It shows.

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