Plot summary
Sissi is Elisabeth, the second oldest daughter of Duke Max in Bavaria and Duchess Ludovika. She grows up with her seven siblings at Possenhofen Castle on Lake Starnberg, a carefree girl who loves nature. Her mother takes her and her older sister Helene, called Néné, to Bad Ischl in Upper Austria. Archduchess Sophie, Ludovika's sister and Emperor Franz Joseph's mother, has arranged for Néné to meet the emperor there. Sissi does not know why they have come, and her aunt, who keeps strict court etiquette, forbids her to join the social events. Sissi slips out of her locked room through a window and goes fishing in the forest, where she comes across Franz Joseph. He does not know that she is his cousin, and she does not tell him who she is.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sissi (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sissi's success brought Empress Elisabeth into popular culture and led to the creation of the 1992 musical Elisabeth, which became the most successful German-language musical of all time. The trilogy was later parodied in the 2007 animated film Lissi.
- The exoplanet HAT-P-14b and its host star were named Sissi and Franz in the 2019 NameExoWorlds contest, after the main characters of the film.
- The scenes of Sissi's youth on Lake Starnberg were actually filmed at Fuschl Castle at Lake Fuschl in the Salzkammergut region, because the real Possenhofen Castle was in a poor condition at the time.
- Romy Schneider's role as Elisabeth is considered her acting breakthrough, and she reprised it in Luchino Visconti's 1972 film Ludwig, playing the Empress as a mature and cynical woman.
- The trilogy became a popular Christmas television special, shown with some regularity in German-speaking countries, Hungary and Italy, helped by Empress Elisabeth's birth on Christmas Eve 1837.
