Vicky Krieps: ​‘I would close my eyes and hold Sis­si on my right hand and Romy Schnei­der on my left’

At the cen­tre of Marie Kreutzer’s Cor­sage lies a spell­bind­ing per­for­mance by Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elis­a­beth of Aus­tria, who, upon turn­ing 40, begins to unrav­el and rebel against her roy­al duties. The film marks a stun­ning run for the actor, fol­low­ing Phan­tom Thread and Bergman Island.

LWLies: What were your first encoun­ters with Empress Elisabeth?

Krieps: I knew her from the movies with Romy Schnei­der, which I was not allowed to watch at my house because my mum was very eman­ci­pat­ed. We didn’t have any princess stuff, but my neigh­bours did, so I would watch the movies there. They also had the biog­ra­phy, and I read it. As I got to the end of the book some­thing start­ed to feel very dark and sad, and I remem­ber just stay­ing with this mys­tery. I could just sense there was some­thing wrong, but I was too young to under­stand. There seemed to be a dif­fer­ence between what I read and what I had seen in the Ernst Marisch­ka movies.

What were the phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tions you had to do?

Every­thing [Laughs]. There was the horse rid­ing on the ladies’ sad­dle, and it is very dif­fi­cult to ride on a ladies’ sad­dle! It’s just bloody stu­pid. I loved the fenc­ing, but I had to learn to do it with high shoes and a corset which, again, is bloody stu­pid. You can’t move. I could’ve screamed all through the shoot because every sin­gle thing was annoy­ing and made me feel trapped. When I wore the corset I couldn’t eat sol­id foods, so I had to make smooth­ies and soups and I could only eat at night. I knew prob­a­bly every sin­gle thing about her you can imag­ine. I was full of a mil­lion dif­fer­ent things, but once I was on set, I let it all go. In Ger­man we say ​‘scheiß drauf’, like I real­ly didn’t give a shit, because she wouldn’t have giv­en a shit – and that’s what made her suffocate.

That def­i­nite­ly comes across in the ways you chan­nel Sissi’s melan­choly through mis­chief, which brought this dark comedic ele­ment to the film.

Some­times when I need­ed strength – because it was very, very hard to make this movie – I would close my eyes and hold Sis­si on my right hand and Romy Schnei­der on my left, and I would say: Okay, now we go to the play­ground. I want­ed to give this gift to them; the pos­si­bil­i­ty to play, and mis­be­have, and make mis­takes and not be per­fect. I want­ed to break the image of the per­fect beau­ti­ful princess, of the per­fect beau­ti­ful actress that Romy Schnei­der had been trapped in. Both had suf­fered from the same thing. There was no make­up on my face, and I know that was such an impor­tant part of both their lives, trapped in being beau­ti­ful and hav­ing to live up to that beau­ty. What a ter­ror, really!

Were there any par­tic­u­lar parts of the mythol­o­gy that Marie Kreutzer decid­ed to embrace in her script, that par­tic­u­lar­ly drew you in?

It was real­ly her research that brought up that Sis­si had this friend­ship with her cousin. He was seen as a com­plete freak any­way, he liked to have his boys – the movie Lud­wig is about him. It’s inter­est­ing that they were cousins and that they were both seen as so dif­fi­cult. They were prob­a­bly friends because they both felt that same ​“ugh” feel­ing about soci­ety. I knew about her daugh­ter, but what Marie did… she showed the daugh­ter becom­ing the father. I have kids and I see this with my daugh­ters some­times. They can become the moral voice of your con­science and say ​“mum, behave now”. The way Marie did it is so heart­break­ing. Even the girl, who was won­der­ful to work with, got very sad and upset. I had to hold her in my arms for a long time. She could feel the harsh­ness of her char­ac­ter. It must have been true because if you read her diary, she was very severe towards her moth­er, unfor­tu­nate­ly. And of course the son, who famous­ly killed him­self. What he says in the movie, ​“the monar­chy is dying” is actu­al­ly a Sis­si quote. She said that very ear­ly on, which is why it’s so iron­ic that she got killed by an anar­chist, when she her­self was an oppo­nent of monarchy. 

And with her ladies-in-wait­ing, there was this close­ness that peo­ple nev­er know, because it is so dif­fi­cult when you talk about peo­ple that lived before. We don’t actu­al­ly know what hap­pened, so we might as well use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a fairy­tale, to say some­thing about our soci­ety. The same way she brings in Louis Le Prince, pos­si­bly the first per­son to shoot a mov­ing pic­ture sequence using a sin­gle lens cam­era and a strip of film. When she found out about him, she was shocked that she was taught in film school that it was the Lumière broth­ers who did it first. No one talks about him, and that’s also unfair. He seemed to be ahead of his time just like Sissi.I think this woman was more intel­li­gent than any­thing she was allowed to be.

I want to know what it was like to work with those beau­ti­ful dogs.

Oh, I love them… but to work with them was a pain in the ass! This breed of dog isn’t made to be trained like that. They are known to be almost like cats – very inde­pen­dent. But look­ing back, I love that they were mis­be­hav­ing. My dress was always full of sausage for the dogs to fol­low me, but they still wouldn’t fol­low! The cos­tume design­er had a fit because the dress­es had grease stains on them from the sausage. There’s a scene when Flo­ri­an Teicht­meis­ter comes in the room while I’m naked in the bed, and I think the dogs could feel some­thing in his ener­gy because they start­ed defend­ing me. They were stand­ing there look­ing at him and growl­ing as he moved towards me because they could feel the threat of some­thing com­ing for me.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.