Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

boblipton In between saving the Austro-Hungarian Empire for her screen husband as Sissi, Romy Schneider took the time out to rule Great Britain in her own right. Hereshe humbly but effortlessly wins the hearts of all (except for her controlling mother, of course) with her fearless determination to read newspapers and do the right thing.In order to put her off from interfering too much with their running things, her ministers decide to marry her off to Prince Albert, whom she has never met; she objects, as does Albert. Fortunately, G*d watches over fools and constitutional monarchs, and they are both hiding out in the slums of Windsor, where rough seafaring men play Stephen Foster tunes, where they can meet cute and fall in love without interfering with the fiction that this was anything but a love-match in any version of reality.It's another of the cream-puff costume dramas that Ernst Marischka wrote and directed Miss Schneider in. Here, various high-class locations around Vienna stand in for various high-class locations around Britain. The Austrian audiences must have lapped up the luxury after the devastation of two world wars over forty years.

Dunham16 The mom and daughter team associated in real life with Adolf Hitler starred in a series of German language films by Ernst Mariskha which still hold up today.In 1954 Magda was governess to England's Queen Victoria played by Romy told against her will to marry on her eighteenth birthday. Her mom has arranged a marriage with the prince of the kingdom of southern France in the early nineteenth century Orange. The governess is talked into by Victoria's closest political ally Lord Melbourne to help him see Victoria should marry the Prince of Saxony, Albert of Saxe Coburg The delightful story of how the two meet accidentally under false pretenses away from royal trapping to fall in love is the center of this delightful film done through European not English point of view. The photography and acting are glorious though the reason this film is not a perfect 10 is the royal trapping of the British royal residences seem in the director's eyes more truly European than English.

dbdumonteil Just made before Empress Elizabeth's famous trilogy ,this story like biopic of Queen Victoria's salad days retains the same obsolete charm.Not only it features Romy Schneider and her mother Magda (who,oddly,does not play her mother here but a baroness,the queen's lady-in-waiting and confident) ,but it depicts the meeting Albert /Victoria as the director (Ernst Marischka who directed the four movies)would do with Elizabeth and Francis Joseph: here they meet in an inn where Johann Strauss is playing his famous waltzes on the piano;in "Sissi" ,the heroine goes fishing and catches ... her future husband!A rather daring -for the time- line in the dialog:Victoria would like to know the meaning of the word "rape" and her mentor can't explain.In "Sissi " there would not be such a thing.That said,although "Madchenjähre" is quite pleasant,it is not as buoyant,as charming and as compelling as "Sissi"

Marcin Kukuczka Ernst Marischka, one of the most respected Austrian directors of that time, made films full of beautiful scenes, delicate love and with respect to all that is precious in life. Nowadays, if people should hear about him, they associate the name of Marischka with SISSI trilogy (1955,1956,1957). However, he made other excellent films like DAS DREIMADERLHAUS (1958), EMBEZZLED HEAVEN (1958) and definitely this one, MADCHENJAHRE EINER KONIGIN showing the young years of queen Victoria. Although it deals with a slightly different theme than SISSI films, I do not see many differences between this movie and SISSI. They are strikingly similar.The movie is almost identical. The style, the music, the photography. In fact, the crew are almost the same. Anton Profes, Bruno Mondi!The cast... Romy Schneider's one of the first main roles. It was a lovely introduction to her role of Sissi since this film was made one year before the first part of the trilogy about the Austrian empress. It is also a film where Romy plays with her mother, Magda Schneider. But Ernst Marischka was not the first director who cast Romy to play with her mum. Romy's debut, WENN DER WEISSE FLIEDER WIEDER BLUHN (1953) was her performance with her mother, too. Therefore, there were some voices that Romy began her Austrian career on the bases of her mother's fame. Indeed, there is some truth in it.Again, like in SISSI, this film shows love very gently. Victoria meets Prince Albert in a little inn in Dover. Their sympathy is based on pure exaltation in dance and gentle smiles. And now...? What would it be showed like? Only sex... But is it the only thing love is based on?I am grateful to Ernst Marischka for these movies. They had a soul and a message. Some people may call them kitschy, but I will never give up admiring these films. They are IMPRESSIVE!!! UNFORTUNATELY, HIGHLY UNDERRATED!