E1 ENTERTAINMENTCrown Prince,The

"The Crown Prince" joins previous cinematic treatments of the (supposed) murder-suicide that left Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his teenaged mistress Marie (or Mary) Vetsera dead in the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling. Without exception the chain of events leading to the Mayerling tragedy has been presented as doomed royal love between a young and beautiful girl and an older man, married and a father, who was at political odds with his autocratic father, and had a tortured relationship with an eccentric mother obsessed with little else but preserving her beauty. "The Crown Prince" goes a bit further than this by embedding, or trying to embed, the story in the complex political situation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1870s and 1880s, but in the last analysis this effort pushes too much information at the audience and makes the story that much more turgid and strained.It's a pity, because the production values are high and the cast promising. Costumes and scenery are on point; the film was made in Vienna and other historical locations and there is little about the production to raise doubts about the producers' intent. The casting is, alas, uneven. Max von Thun, from an eminent titled family (he's really Graf/Count von Thun and Hohenstein) and son of the lauded actor Friedrich von Thun, captures Rudolf's aristocratic bearing while at the same time convincingly conveying the archduke's yearning for a viable relationship with his future subjects. It's a difficult feat; many an actor has stumbled badly at representing a royal person engaged in such a search; many of them come off as no more than disobedient, rebellious brats in a delayed adolescence. Max von Thun mines a richer vein of human experience, and even when he realizes his efforts are doomed, he continues to challenge the barriers without giving in to the temptation to become hysterical while doing so.Other cast members are less successful. Claus Maria Brandauer gives us a remote, uncommunicative Emperor Franz Josef. It's hard to tell here whether the intent was to present a Franz Josef so mired in the past that he was determined to remain immobile in the face of his son's hopes to modernize the tottering Austro-Hungarian empire, or an inept sovereign who may or may not be the prisoner/tool of the ambitious chief minister, Count Taafe. It is unlikely that we'll ever see a completely satisfying portrayal of the tormented Empress Elisabeth; Sandra Ceccarelli seems unable to decide how she should represent this elusive character. Many of the supporting characters come off as mere puppets who do pretty much what we'd expect them to do. As Rudolf's wife Stephanie of Belgium, Daniela Golpashin is at first shy and unhappy, then a joyous mother (though only of a daughter, who could not succeed to the Austro-Hungarian throne), and finally bitter and resentful after the marriage collapses. Surprise, surprise. As Rudolf's Prussian counterpart Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, Robert Stadlober has little to do but boast of Prussian military/industrial superiority and rub Rudolf's nose in Prussia's crushing defeat of Austria at Sadowa in 1866. Oh, yeah... he also spends a lot of time with Rudolf visiting a brothel in Vienna. That brings up the one cast member other than Max von Thun whose character stands out as worthy of attention: Birgit Minichmayr as Rudolf's longtime mistress, Mitzi Kaspar, who started as an employee of that brothel. Remembered for her portrayal of one of Hitler's secretaries in "Untergang/Downfall," Minichmayr here creates a convincing prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold, the woman who loves Rudolf despite his faults and goes so far as to inform the police that the Crown Prince is showing suicidal tendencies. (Of course the chief of police, under Taafe's thumb, does nothing about it.)The weakest link in the cast is Vittoria Puccini as Mary Vetsera. Why filmmakers persistently cast tall, striking blondes in this role (cf. Catherine Deneuve in 1968's "Mayerling") is incomprehensible. The simple fact, easily ascertainable by googling the lady, is that Mary was dark, short, and at 17 still packed a fair amount of baby fat. It remains a mystery how and why a jaded aristocrat 18 years her senior was attracted to her; perhaps her youth and innocence caught his eye, though it's often said that at 17 she was anything but innocent. There's no doubt of the relationship; the historical Rudolf did want to divorce Stephanie, renounce the throne and marry Mary, and historians continue to report that the girl was pregnant with Rudolf's child when she died. Puccini, however, addresses none of the tangled background to the affair. She glides through her scenes, at first hopelessly infatuated with a prince she met as a child, and then as a pawn aggressively manipulated by a mother desperate to avoid poverty by marrying her daughter to a rich man. (Cue resounding echoes of the corset scene in "Titanic" when Mrs Bukater lectures Rose on her need to marry Cal Hockley....) Of course the issue is further complicated because (unknown to Mary), Mama Vetsera herself was once intimate with Rudolf and, as a woman with a past, is well aware of the dangers her daughter faces in consorting with the heir to the imperial throne.If this film doesn't really add up to the sum of its parts, it's largely because the particular subject matter will always defeat the effort. More than any of its predecessors, "The Crown Prince" tries to tackle many aspects of a very shadowy episode, and for that very reason obscures and loses sight of its own story line. The most that can be done by any film about Rudolf and Mary is to theorize about a murky royal scandal in 19th-century Europe. We never will know the whole truth, except that 2 people ended up dead. Some reports say that Mary's skull showed no sign of a bullet wound, but had clear signs of blunt force trauma. The gun that killed Rudolf wasn't his and all 6 bullets were allegedly fired, which is hardly consistent with suicide. Franz Josef's grandniece-in-law, the last Austrian Empress Zita, was convinced that Rudolf and Mary were murdered. Whether any historian or filmmaker will ever succeed in creating a reliable account of these events remains to be seen. Certainly, however, this film doesn't achieve that goal.

This is a fictionalized account of Crown Prince Rudolph of Hapsburg. While the general story is based on fact, the creators took liberal license in their interpretation and it morphs into an unhappy fairytale about princes, princesses and royalty. My initial reaction was that the production was dull, despite an illustrious cast. The key character, Prince Rudolph, seemed weak, ineffectual, good-looking and boring. To believe that this man, so obsessed with a playboy lifestyle, was in fact a great political/military and scientific thinker stretched the bounds of credulity. But indeed what he was trying to forestall--war among European countries--materialized into World War I and the fall of the Hapsburg empire. His vision of a united Europe took a few more centuries. To consolidate his position and strengthen his relationship with his estranged father, Rudolph marries a woman who is only able to bear him a daughter, thereby jeopardizing the future line able to inherit the Hapsburg empire. Rudolph has so many liaisons that he is plagued by gonorrhea, a disease he passes to his wife, and which the movie implies drives him to become a morphine addict. Eventually he becomes entranced with Baroness Maria Vetsera, the daughter of an old lover. She willingly sacrifices a brilliant marriage and future just to be with him. The story ends tragically at Mayerling, where they decide to face death together.At the end of the second disk I did not have a satisfying feeling; I did not have any new insight into the fascinating Hapsburg family. But the movie was pleasant to watch, set amidst the glorious buildings and palaces of Vienna and Prague, and the wardrobe at least remained true to the period. I think it was worth watching but hardly a stellar production.

This movie was terrific, fairly accurate.It gives a good insider's look at the Austrian Imperial family.Kron Prinz Rudolf, the heir to the dual monarchy of Habsburg Austria Hungary, is a progressive waiting out the death of his father, Kaiser Franz Joseph who is far more conservative.The Kron Prinz ends up in a loveless marriage with the Princess Royal of Belgium and does have one child, a daughter, with her, but does have affairs with other women, eventually ending with one, Countess Marie Vetsera.The Kron Prinz is contending with an imperial prime minister who has set spies on him--the Kron Prinz is approached several times by representatives of Hungary who would like him to rule that nation as King. The Kron Prinz will not do so out of respect for his father and does see some hope of keeping the empire united.These discussions are allegedly the basis for the Kaiser disowning the Kron Prinz as his heir. I am not so sure if this ever took place. Rudolph was Kaiser Franz Joseph's only son. He was popular; he was family; he was the emperor's son. No matter what Rudolph personally believed, I do not believe that the Kaiser would have disowned his son. His being deposed would have caused more trouble for the Kaiser. More likely, the Kaiser would have replaced a rather disagreeable prime minister.The film is instructive of the lead in to WWI.

Authentic period romance. Thoroughly enjoyable. Get a good bottle of plonk out, get cozy and snuggle up to your partner for an evening's (or two)romance, drama and history

this movie was great and gave an insight to the royal family of Austria. Had read about this family before getting the movie and it was fairly accurate in what it portrayed