It was the winter of 1956

 It was the winter of 1956 when filming began on Sissi – Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin in Vienna and the Bavarian Alps.

The final chapter of Ernst Marischka’s beloved trilogy, it captured the bittersweet maturity of Empress Elisabeth’s life, and Romy Schneider—only eighteen then—transformed from the radiant girl of Sissi (1955) into a woman carrying the full grace and loneliness of imperial duty. Shooting took place partly in Schönbrunn Palace and the Hofburg, with additional scenes filmed at Schloss Possenhofen by Lake Starnberg, where Romy’s real mother, Magda Schneider, had spent time in her youth. The production reunited the same creative circle: Marischka directing, Fritz Planer behind the camera, and Hans May composing those sweeping melodies that seemed to breathe from the marble halls. Circa March 1957, Romy filmed the legendary “farewell” sequence—when Sissi stands before the imperial gates, her eyes glistening beneath the Austrian winter light. The crew stood silent as the take ended. One lighting technician whispered, “That’s not acting anymore. That’s her heart.”

Behind the glamour, Romy’s life was shifting. Between takes, she wrote long letters to Alain Delon, whom she would meet two years later on Christine (1958), but already she spoke of longing and restlessness. “I’m trapped in a dream they built for me,” she confessed to her diary, referring to the Sissi persona that both made her and imprisoned her. The film’s release in December 1957 was a sensation across Europe, drawing millions to cinemas from Munich to Paris. Crowds gathered outside Vienna’s Apollo Kino for the premiere; Romy appeared in white satin, escorted by her mother, both visibly moved by the applause. Emperor Franz Joseph’s role, again played by Karlheinz Böhm, deepened in emotional texture. Their on-screen chemistry—gentle, tragic, eternal—was so palpable that European magazines began referring to them as “the imperial pair of the silver screen.” Yet Romy was already yearning to break away from this image, to act in films of greater emotional truth. Her agent received offers from France and Italy. By early 1958, she had begun studying French intensively in anticipation of a new chapter.

But the legend of Sissi refused to fade. In every Viennese café, her portrait hung beside that of the real Empress Elisabeth. Elderly women remembered the imperial court; young girls imitated Romy’s coiffure. Even today, Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin feels like a time capsule of postwar Europe’s yearning for beauty and innocence. What few knew then was that Romy, though smiling on camera, was already carrying an old soul. She often visited the Schönbrunn set early, before dawn, to walk through empty corridors in costume—alone, lost in thought. Decades later, when asked about that final scene, she said softly, “It wasn’t Sissi who cried. It was Romy.” That confession, simple and shattering, revealed what audiences always sensed—that her magic came not from pretending to be someone else, but from giving herself away completely.