Ophuls’ version of the courtship and marriage between Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Czech Countess Sophie Chotek depicts these events as an example of lovers uniting in the face of official disapproval. Love triumphs briefly over order and duty but is ultimately defeated by history itself. With his customary irony, Ophuls presents a nostalgic view of the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where a stifling discipline reigns over exquisite elegance, all filmed with an extravagantly mobile camera and a mastery of mise-en-scène that looks forward to his postwar films. The poignancy of this nostalgia would hardly have escaped the film’s original audiences, given its release in the early days of World War II.