LE SECRET DE MAYERLING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 18

LE SECRET DE MAYERLING

(Claude Dolbert-International Films) F your interest in films goes back to the time when Charles Boyer’s hair was as thick as his accent, then you may recall that he co-starred with Danielle Darrieux in a French production called Mayerling, which was shown in New Zealand early in 1939. It was a romantic three-handkerchief chronicle of the events which led up to the tragedy at the Habsburg hunting-lodge of Mayerling in 1889 when the Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress Marie Vetsera were found shot, apparently as the consequence of a suicide pact. Le Secret de Mayerling is another run over the same ground, and sets out to show that suicide was not the explanation of this unsolved mystery of history. Instead, it is suggested that since Rudolph was liberal and had pro-Slav and proMagyar tendencies his assassination was contrived through the agency of the Austrian secret police. Though Jean Marais failed to carry conviction as a politicking Crown Prince, I thought that the director, Jean Delannoy, and his script-writer Jacques Remy made out a fairly good case, certainly one that fitted the known facts. But this is in places a pretty grim film-occasionally a little too grim for the Anglo-Saxon stomach-and once or twice incongruous comedy drew derisive laughter from a fairly intelligent audience. The photography, however, is, on the whole, fitstclass, and the stifling atmosphere of Imperial intrigue is convincingly evoked. Marie Vetsera is, incidentally, played by Dominique Blanchar-daughter of the French actor, Pierre Blanchar.