I have lately been on an Omar Sharif binge. Mayerling is his third movie that I have seen these past few weeks. My mother was a fan of this movie. I never understood why. Now that I am old enough myself I understand the appeal of Mayerling. The sets are opulent. The cinematography is wonderful. And oh my were Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve beautiful! They looked incredible together! Although Deneuve's acting lacks a certain passion I felt Omar Sharif's performance, especially in the last scene, was quite touching. James Mason didn't have enough to do despite playing the character of the emperor. Ava Gardner looked older than her age. The sexual content and nudity, though tame by today's standards, is a bit crude. I have watched this movie three times and each time by the end of the movie I am shamelessly crying. Of course such love does not exist in real life but this kind of movies make one wish that it did.

I didn't recognise this film when I saw it on the schedules but with an interest in the true-life story, I decided to watch it. From an era (late 60's, early 70's) when factual historical costume drama was all the rage ("A Man For All Seasons", "Waterloo", "Cromwell", "Nicolas & Alexandra"), "Mayerling" doesn't stray too far from the established template - lavish sets, beautiful costumes, on the plus side, overlong playing time and occasional portentousness and pretentiousness on the debit side.Terence "name above the title" Young, marshals his forces well to create a sumptuous looking film which is unstinting in its recreation of the opulence of the Hapsburg Court (in one scene a palace interior is made into a paddock for horse-riding!) and also makes excellent use of the exteriors, both around the palace and a snow-bedecked countryside around the Mayerling cottage.He does likewise with some heavyweight acting talent and gets excellent performances in support from James Mason as the grizzled Emperor, Ava Gardner as his wife, torn between deference to her husband the emperor and maternal devotion to her son, Genevieve Paige as a lively go-between cousin and ex-lover of Prince Rudolf and James Robertson-Justice who is the very spit of Edward Prince of Wales.In the leads Omar Sharif fails to really convey the passion of his fling with his young Baroness, nor perhaps the final madness which drives him to their destruction but is solid and certainly manly enough in his various official uniforms. Catherine Deneuve after initially offering some pith is reduced to a doe-eyed sacrificial lamb by the tragic conclusion.There are sub-plots involving interior and exterior (to Austria) politics, perhaps played up to further contribute to Rudolf's hopeless frame of mind, as well as passing themes of royal duty, family dynasty and the universal one of stern father and misunderstood son, but in truth these tend to distract from the central theme of the film which should have been the doomed love-affair. The dialogue is over-serious and predictable at times and many scenes are too long (particularly the encounter at the ballet) but this is a tragedy after all which might excuse the funereal pace at times and the grim final scene is unquestionably well executed (no pun intended).The cinematography is excellent throughout, redolent of Lean at his best (there's even a Zhivago-type moment at the train station with Deneuve alighting from her train, her head beautifully framed by a fur hood), but perhaps the whole lacks the cohesiveness, impulse and insight into character that Lean might have delivered had he been at the helm. And beautiful as it is, Khatchaturian's featured music, suffers a little from over-familiarity and to that extent again is inferior to Zhivago which of course had Maurice Jarre's original soundtrack to its credit.In the end, like the tragic Rudolf himself, if you can forgive the glibness, a noble failure of a movie, although one can't help one-self jumping forward in time some 50 years to when a British heir-apparent (Edward VIII,) torn between love and duty was able to safely abdicate a throne and live abroad in luxury with his lover, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, without the need of a suicide pact...

The dashing Omar Sharif was born to be a crown-prince, or at least look the part to perfection (is he of royal Egyptian blood?), while Catherine Deneuve takes your breath away in every scene she's in, most notably as they watch "Giselle" at the theater. An Oedipus complex is hinted at here, and I suppose not all sons (not even only sons!) kiss their mothers on the lips (or it could be an Austrian thing, who knows?). But given his lifestyle of high living, promiscuity and dalliances with radical politics, coupled by an addiction to morphine and the off-chance of insanity in the blood, I don't think the end was as bittersweet and romantic as the movie portrayed it to be. No doubt the prince was a depressed, politically-impotent man who saw no promise in a future which included a loveless marriage, a domineering father and a mother who was never there--no big deal to most, but this was an only child used to getting his way most of the time. I'm sure Maria Vetsera, practically a child in love for the first time, was only too flattered to have been chosen by the prince to die with him. All in the name of love, of course.

Mayerling is supposed to be a story of love and passion set in the backdrop of political turmoil in the austro-hungarian empire. The problem is there is very little passion in this movie. Catherine Deneuve, which I usually love, and Omar Sharif give such wooden performances that it is hard to imagine they would die of love. Ava Gardner is about as bad and James Mason does hardly better. Only James Robertson Justice and Genevieve Page seem to believe in what they are doing.As far as the political story, you will not know very much more of the state of the empire after seing the movie. Characters drop by Omar Sharif once a while without enlightening us very much about their problems and goals. The only redeeming values are production values which are quite good. Better watch the original French movie with Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux.