Psycho. #21

In this column — delayed due to illness — Caspar looks at the star power of Romy Schneider

What's the deal with Romy Schneider?

I’m embarrassed to say that I know what you mean by this seemingly insane question, but my faithful readers may not, so let me start by giving my take on it. I think what you mean is as follows: what is it about the screen persona of Romy Schneider — what is her essence, her quiddity? And how did that very particular affect make her at one point such a ubiquitous presence in European arthouse cinema? 

In my opinion the prime consideration when thinking about Romy Schneider is her star-making turn in a series of inane, chichi films about Empress Elisabeth of Austria. For a proper cinematic depiction of Sissi, as Elisabeth was known, I recommend Marie Kreutzer’s Vicky Krieps-starring Corsage (2022) far more than the rosewater-flavoured trilogy Schneider made in the mid-to-late 50s. But even then, Kreutzer’s film — though it is a real blast of cinema, and Krieps gives another masterclass in steely-fragile endurance — does not quite do justice to the sheer folly of what Sissi must have been like. Wikipedia gives a perfectly thrilling amount of information about her extensive beauty regimen (I am homosexual fyi), including the elite detail that she used to wash her hair in eggs and cognac. I seem to have memorised from somewhere or other the fact that she used to be hand-sewn into her dresses every morning. A final Sissi recommendation from me? You can have a very good time on the internet searching for “Empress Elisabeth fan” to marvel at just some of the stunning hand-held fans (as I have said, I am homosexual) that she owned, precious masterpieces of exquisitely hewn ivory and lace, with handles of rich 19th century filigree. 

But to return to the Romy Schneider trilogy, these are films that made her name in Europe to a degree that is hard to explain. When I was a teenager in France, the films were still a staple of the Christmas TV slate, as they still are (I believe) in Germany and Italy. A girl in my class was obsessed with them and would watch them on repeat at the weekends, marvelling perhaps at the Diana- and Marie Antoinette-like story of the young princess who was uncomfortable in the role that she was required to take on but then became iconic in her own right. The films, whatever their flaws — I find them borderline unwatchable — had frou-frou costumes a-go-go and a sort of propagandistic Technicolor appeal, elegising a certain strain of pan-European glamour and power. Coming out ten years after the end of the Second World War, in a rapidly rebuilding but deeply wounded Europe, I suppose the films must have appealed to a type of European sensibility that could believe in cross-continental harmony, and perhaps yearned for the halcyon splendour of Old Europe. At any rate, the first film in the trilogy made bank, and was swiftly followed by two more, which (weirdly, as they have no artistic merit) were selected in Cannes alongside Fellini and Bresson (!). This has been a long digression, but allow me to note that Emperor Franz Joseph, in the films, is played by Karlheinz Böhm, who would be credited as “Carl Boehm” a couple of years later for his lead role in Michael Powell’s masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960).