Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

leplatypus After Marilyn, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly, Carrie Fisher, it was her turn : I picked up this one to learn my classics and to see a young Romy. At only 21 but after the Sissy movies, she shows already a great talent, especially by managing to be sometimes tragically desperate and other times playful. It would be interesting to check the age gap with her old lover, just to see if this precious, royal love is similar to other shocking ones (Lolita for example !). However, what i remember from the movie is that this Tsar was a sort of Lincoln and JFK in this old Russia : liberal, he wanted freedom and power for his people. For sure, his establishment was upset of his reforms so like a later company, a rebellious fringe inside the government helps the true rebels (terrorists) to get access and perform the assassination. It's the 1st time i heard this story of this brave and courageous state-man but it's not a surprise as for decades, we live under the Paxamericana law and everything outside is not considered as valuable ! Check the year of this production as there is indeed no new movies about him since 1959 !

MARIO GAUCI Following his 11-year tenure in Hollywood between 1941 and 1952, expatriate German director Siodmak decided to return to Europe; he would subsequently contrive to make three more English-language films, even if they weren’t up to his best work in the States – but, then, neither was the ‘foreign’ stuff.This costumer (a remake of a 1938 film by Maurice Tourneur) is a German/French co-production: it’s a good-looking if stilted melodrama involving impossible love in the Russian court of Alexander II (Curd Jurgens); with an ailing wife, he draws his amorous attention to a proud teenage beauty (Romy Schneider). Their romance, however, is likely to throw the already troubled Czarist rule (by the activities of a group of terrorists seeking more humane laws) into turmoil; he himself mistrusts his ministers, but they in their turn are willing to collaborate with the ‘enemy’ in order to put a stop to Jurgens and Schneider’s love – which is giving the Empire a bad name thus threatening their own position! In fact, during the course of the film, we are witness to no fewer than four attempts on the Czar’s life – which is a bit much, if you ask me; nevertheless, it’s in scenes like these where we get a glimpse of the old Siodmak (he was one of the finest exponents of Film Noir): the film’s most creative bit of direction is Siodmak’s decision to refrain from showing a duel but rather concentrate on the snow-covered trees nearby and only cutting to the bloodied body (Katia’s officer brother who was defending her honor!) once the shots are heard on the soundtrack. The revolutionaries themselves – led by future Claude Chabrol regular Michel Bouquet – are typically depicted as desperate men (and women) rather than villainous (a fate reserved for the Ministers, though they’re actually more pitiful and misguided in their own self-importance than truly evil); the ultimate irony is that Jurgens had always been sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause, but the burden of tradition and a whole set of events (such as the release of the rebels’ imprisoned friends, promised them by the Emperor via Katia, seen as an act of betrayal when the Ministers arrange for the ex-convicts to be gunned down soon after) eventually seal his fate…just as, with the Empress dead, Schneider was about to take her place on the throne by his side! For the record, the impossibly young Schneider had actually risen to stardom with a similar Ruritanian i.e. quasi fairy-tale role – that of Princess Sissi in a series of three Austrian films made between 1955 and 1957; as for Jurgens, I have his second of two Michel Strogoff films (made in 1956 and 1961) recorded, as was this one, off Italian TV awaiting its turn to be watched. Finally, given KATIA’s silly U.S. retitling, one shouldn’t confuse it with an earlier Siodmak picture from his Hollywood days – THE GREAT SINNER (1949) which, incidentally, was also a period piece about Russians (adapted, as a matter of fact, from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler”).

dbdumonteil A remake of Maurice Tourneur's eponymous movie of the late thirties,"Katia" is ,like its predecessor ,a harmless charming movie.Romy Schneider is gorgeous,Curd Jurgens ,a credible czar;the cast also includes earnest thespians Monique Mélinand as the unfortunate empress and Chabrol's future favorite Michel Bouquet as an anarchist.French lefty critics were very hard on "katia" when it was released."The 1959 cinematographic season" slagged it off,calling it " a committed work" (but in the wrong sense of the term),which praised tsarism.Such opinions seem irrelevant today."Katia" is to Russia what "Sissi " was to Austria: a nice fairytale,probably not very historically accurate,but who cares?

mariedup Who can go through this movie without being charmed by the character of Katia (Romy Schneider)? From her teenage days in a school for poor noble young ladies to her near accession to the throne of Russia, she showed utter and complete love and devotion for the Tsar Alexander II. What is particularly well depicted in this movie is the waiting. Katia and Alexander spend hours, days, years sometimes, waiting to see each other again. And each second of waiting renders their love stronger. The whole movie is based on some kind of patience/impatience duality. Alexander begs Katia to be patient but the terrorists feel anything but patience against the regime. They want reform now, they want the tsar out, with everything he represents, now. They are a light of impatience in a country that is still trapped in laws and traditions of the middle ages.