Act of the Heart (1970) DVD-R

Starring I Zarah Leander, Willy Birgel, Maria Koppenhöfer, Lotte Koch, Axel von Ambesser
Directed by Carl Froelich

Print: Black and White
Runtime: 103min.
Genre: Drama

As the title "The Queen's Heart" suggests, this early German black and white version of Mary Queen of Scott's eventful reign and death focuses on her emotional perception rather lyrically, with some songs, mainly by her. Starting in the Tower, awaiting and receiving her sentence to the ax from the English court, where Elisabeth I chose to remain absent in person, we flash back to Mary's arrival after a long exile at the sophisticated, splendidly hedonistic French royal court, where she was raised as a Catholic, in her people's eyes effeminate or even depraved, elegant pleasure-accustomed lady, at utter odds with the stern Scottish protestantism of John Knox as well as England's Anglicanism. No less rugged and troublesome, even turning bloody, are Mary's affairs with Lord Henry Darnley, a Scottish-born dandy favorite Elisabeth sent her, who becomes Mary's unfaithful king-consort to give Scotland a male heir, James Stewart, and with true stern Scottish Lord Bothwell, who by any means -.