Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 7, 2017

Note: This film is available as a part of The Sissi Collection.

Peter O’Toole will enter the cinematic record books for any number of reasons, including the fact that he remains one of the most Oscar nominated actors to never receive an “official” award (O’Toole was feted with an honorary Academy Award in 2003, perhaps precisely because he had never “really” won). O’Toole’s second and third nominations for Best Actor made history in a different way, for in 1964’s Becket and 1968’s The Lion in Winter, O’Toole was playing the same real life historical character (at different ages), King Henry II. There have been at least a few other performers who have played the same character in different films, and some of them, like Bing Crosby in Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, or Al Pacino, in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, have also garnered Oscar nominations for each film, like O'Toole, though by and large those performances have been of fictional characters. One of the few other times the same performer has played the same real life historical character in otherwise unrelated films was when Romy Schneider "recreated" her take on Empress Elisabeth of Austria for Luchino Visconti's Ludwig , years after she had taken on the same role in a series of films that became known as The Sissi Trilogy ("Sissi" was the diminutive nickname family members called Elisabeth). This in and of itself is kind of a fascinating "trivia" phenomenon, since I personally can't think of another example where one performer essayed a role based on a real life historical figure in a "series" and then played the same role years later in a completely unrelated film. There are of course other manifest differences between the series and the Visconti film, due not just to the different eras in which they were produced, but also due to the fact that Ludwig is an often provocative, even trenchant, entry, while all three Sissi films tend to exploit a glossy quasi-"Hollywood" style where happily ever after is never too far out of reach.

The more observant among you may wonder why Victoria in Dover is included in something called The Sissi Collection, but there are strong links between this film and the three Sissi outings, above and beyond the “obvious” elements like star Romy Schneider and director Ernst Marischka. Everything about Victoria in Dover, from its title sequence, to its basic plotline involving royals “meeting cute” for a sort of predestined arranged marriage makes this film play like a kind of trial run for the Sissi films. Victoria in Dover is probably a bit more consistently light hearted than the Sissi films, forsaking that trilogy’s occasional shtick laden physical comedy (often related to what might be considered the Austrian version of a Keystone Cop in the form of a mishap prone "bodyguard" who shadows Sissi in those films) for something perhaps approaching more of a traditional comedy of manners.

In certain ways, Victoria in Dover presages Sissi rather remarkably, especially as it details its title character (played of course by Romy Schneider) trying to break away from an arranged marriage only to “meet cute” with her betrothed, Prince Albert (Adrian Hoven) while out on a hunting expedition (as opposed to Sissi’s foray into fishing territory in that film). This particular coupling of Hoven and Schneider may not have quite the chemistry of that between Karlheinz Böhm and Schneider in the Sissi films, but this film’s overall lighter weight approach to its story and characters perhaps helps to elide that issue.

Also much as with the first Sissi film in particular, Victoria in Dover plays very much like a live action fairy tale, replete with a princess who finds her prince and gets to happily ever after without too much fuss and bother. This film may not be a paradigm of historical accuracy, but it’s generally engaging if never very deep or, frankly, very moving.

Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Victoria in Dover is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Like the three Sissi films, Victoria in Dover was evidently originally released in Academy Ratio, but unlike the Blu-ray presentation of the three Sissi films, Film Movement has only provided a 1.78:1 version of the film in this package. This is probably the least pleasing looking of all the films in this set, one that has fairly visible damage in the form of things like scratches (including a really ugly yellow one that recurs more or less down the middle of the frame at various points). Colors are just a little anemic looking (even beyond the typical Agfacolor tendencies), and there are also odd anomalies at the edges of the frame that repeatedly look like things are out of focus (you can see a few of these moments in some of the screenshots I've included with this review). It also looks to me like some noise reduction has been applied to this release, perhaps because after having been "reformatted" for 1.78:1 the grain field was considered too heavy. There is definitely grain here, but as with the Sissi films in this set, it's weirdly variable looking at times, and freezing any given frame will show clumps of grain in various spots with an absolute absence of it in others.

Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the three Sissi films, Victoria in Dover features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in the original German, with no original mono track offered. Once again, as with the Sissi films, that can sometimes lead to some kind of odd prioritization issues, where elements like ambient environmental sounds can occasionally overpower dialogue. This film has quite a bit of music in it, and there's the same minor distortion (especially in the higher frequencies) that can be heard on occasion in the Sissi films.

Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there are some supplements included in this package, none are on this particular disc. See our The Sissi Collection Blu-ray review for details.

Victoria in Dover Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Victoria in Dover plays like a dry run for the first Sissi film in particular, and as such it has some "curio" value, but this is the least involving of any of the four films in this set, and also has the least pleasing technical merits. Schneider is as "scenic" as ever, but this film only touches briefly on "real" history, choosing instead to create an artificial world with equally artificial feeling emotion.