MAYERLING (1968) *1/2 A tragedy of a film, only slightly surpassed by the tragedy it portrays. Great costumes, great sets, great and/or famous actors (Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve/Ava Gardner)...acting like shit. Only James Mason is adequate in the role of Franz Josef. Richard Pryor would have been more believable as an Austrian prince than Sharif-with sandy dyed hair he looks like a Balboa Park hooker! They overtly tried to dress up 1880s Austria for a young audience with morphine-shooting princes, riots, heavy-handed cops, and a generation gap. The whole thing is like this huge overproduction of what some Hollywood guys think Austria should have looked like. You expect a bear in liederhosen to come wandering by at any minute. I'd bitch about the music too, but it's probably authentic for the time and place. Germanic Romanticism is, as Hesse (or was it Goethe) said, a beery thing. Terrence Young should have voluntarily gone to jail for making this film with all the resources he had.
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