IT was a time Romy Schneider was sick and tired of playing
nice costume heroines in soap operas based on historic figures (Sissi,Victoria)or fiction (this one,among many others). One more -Siomak's "Katia"-,and she would leave for the broader horizons of Welles ,Visconti or Preminger.
Romy herself is going through the motions,she no longer possesses the stamina and the Joie De Vivre which made,even today ,the Sissi saga still enjoyable.It's an actress who is longing for something else ,and it would not be long before she ditched these "disgusting" pastries (Dixit Romy)
"Die Schöne Lügnerin" is one of the weakest efforts of the genre :it is an umpteenth update of "Cinderella" with elements borrowed from Sissi (including the actor who played Colonel :Josef Meinrad) or "Die Deutschmeister".
Light (very light) gallantries including this dressmaker and three male nobles :the czar of Russia,the prince of Metternich and a duke .
Jean-Claude Pascal ,who was a famous romantic lead in the fifties ,was already on the wane and he tried to move into singing in the sixties (he won the Eurovision contest)before falling into oblivion (he died unnoticed).He plays the czar .
Paul Guers ,who plays the French noble,did not have his day in the movies ;too bad for an actor who played "the cat on a hot tin roof" (the part of Brick);after performing Tennessee Williams ,he deserved a better career.
An optimistic version of "Christine" ,so to speak:the proletarian in love with the aristocrat.Or something like that.
