Splendid atmospheric movie and clever use of history to very neatly fit in a fictitious Crown Prince

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2008)

A very clever story that I won't elaborate on as others have done. We enjoyed it first time. Soon after, we visited Vienna for a few days and after buying the DVD of this movie, I remembered it was mostly set in Vienna.
I'd been interested in the Wittelsbach family for quite a while after visits to Bavaria (the Swan King "mad King Ludwig II" etc), and during the Vienna trip I bought a book about the close relatives - the Hapsburgs Kaiser Franz Josef and his wife Sissi. In here was plenty re their children - Sophie, who died very young. The would-be modernist Crown Prince Rudolf who inherited much of his mother's reactionary nature and saw that the stultified Hapsburg court and oldfashioned ways and disregard for the poor of the Hapsburgs and the Court could eventually lead to disaster. After being an agitator for change, and being threatened with arrest for treason if he didn't shut up, and for other reasons concerning his health and love-life to a lesser degree, Rudolf eventually committed suicide. There were two other daughters. Franz Josef's cousin (I think it was) Franz Ferdinand became Crown Prince. It was this Prince who was assassinated at Sarajevo and Franz Josef signed the Articles of War. He died not long after and was succeeded by another cousin who was deposed pretty painlessly towards the end of WW1, just what Rudolf had anticipated would happen if the Emperors didn't change their ways although without any great drama or killing fortunately.
I don't know how the writer of the Illusionist story or the film scriptwriters decided on their characters, but I found it interesting that the movie was set in the period not too long before the 1st World War and the Emperor's picture shown in the movie is clearly Franz Josef late in his life. So Leopold as his fictional second son, the story taking place after Rudolf is dead, this fits in very well with time still for Franz Ferdinand to become Crown Prince after Leopold is dead - another suicide for something like the same reason as his "real brother" Rudolf although Rudolf had no wish to depose his father, only to change his ways. Franz Josef was not at all an unkind or cruel Emperor within the bounds of what was customary at the time in Austria, but of course he had to be firm, took his duties and status as Emperor very seriously, and would not have taken kindly to his son threatening sedition etc.
Notable too that the name of the heroine is Sophie, same as the Emperor's first child. And she's mentioned as being of influence in acquiring the Emperorship of Hungary for Leopold if she marries him. In fact it was Franz Josef's wife Sissi (Elisabeth) who had an enormous influence on the Hungarians, becoming very friendly with their leader and having a much loved home in Hungary that she visited often, and very much with her influence the Hungarians agreed to have Kaiser Franz Josef as their King also (much sooner in time than in the movie), hence the Austro-Hungarian Empire - which also included some of Italy, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere at that time. As for Sophie, that was also the name of Franz Josef's Bavarian Wittelsbach mother.
Rewatching, it was great to see all the Viennese scenes including various places we'd been and pick up on the clever use of names and history to fit in Leopold and the Hungarian issues.