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The Mayerling incident is the essence of the matter, elucidated via Rabelais, van Haarlem, and the doomed Age of Aquarius carousel. Crown Prince Rudolf (Lajos Balázsovits) is introduced ass-first à la Bardot, smoking a cigar atop a hayloft in the secluded estate of the unending orgy. His stepsiblings (Pamela Villoresi and Franco Branciaroli) are partners in debauchery, Mary (Teresa Ann Savoy) arrives with the "Circus of Truth": The swirling nudity of their pansexual romps is a direct affront to Emperor Franz Joseph, whose regime values the rigidity of military uniforms above all. Scandal, "the only weapon we have," a bacchanalia as exhaustively choreographed as the maneuvers of The Round-Up and The Red and the White. Yet here Miklós Jancsó lets the circles spill over, overlap and break off, the bare figures which had previously symbolized humiliation now embody insurrection. Nursery rhymes and Strauss, swings and candles and fireworks, the great hermaphroditic ménage. Freud's "cultural heritage at the cost of sexuality" is visible throughout, Ophüls' De Mayerling à Sarajevo gets a tip of the hat in the photograph running gag. Despite his celebration of the political potential of the characters' explicit couplings, Jancsó paints their pleasure garden as a darkening arena—the infantilized impudence of the revelers suggests few new values to replace the ones being overthrown, a key image is a half-dressed mockery of a waltz that continues to spin and spin until everybody is on the floor. When hiding under the covers is no longer enough, reactionary assassination is passed off as romantic suicide. "May all the children of the empire spit on their fathers." Salò makes for a purposefully degraded counterpart. With Laura Betti, Ivica Pajer, and Ilona Staller.
--- Fernando F. Croce |