Max Ophuls - c/d, s & d?

no

Finally watched The Reckless Moment in an awful YouTube upload this morning. It's not of the first rank, but the bank accounts executive, pawnbroker, bartender, and post office employee are well-drawn, and Ophuls helps Joan Bennett interact with them and their spaces in a way that makes the community live.

just found out Lola Montez is buried in Brooklyn!

Dana Stevens and Peter Labuza talk about Letter from an Unknown Woman here -- I'd forgotten the source novel is by Wes Anderson's inspiration Stefan Zweig.

http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/2014/03/episode-34-dana-stevens-letter-from.html

anyone seen Liebelei? It's on YT, but sans titles.

Just watched Madame de..., my first Ophuls. The story never generates the empathy I want and expect from my melodrama; certainly the fact that Boyer's is by far the most purely likeable character diverts our sympathies from the heroine. But my god, what a gorgeous film! I almost felt like I could have watched it without the subtitles and just luxuriated in the imagery. The time-spanning dance sequence, in particular, is something worthy of Welles.

I definitely need to see more by this guy.

Does it? That's a point worth pondering, for from the start (I've watched this movie about 10 times) my sympathies were with Boyer, and they've deepened. If anything, the film's on his side: he's the more complex one, ready to accept their arrangement as "superficially superficial" because Louise insisted on these terms, as he makes clear. He'll tolerate flirtations, the consummation of a love affair even, so long as she doesn't play him for a sucker in public.

Interesting. I like the idea of the film being on Boyer's side, though I do think that the presentation, particularly in the last 45 mins or so (roughly from the time Louise leaves for Italy), encourages an identification with Louise. I dunno, though; perhaps I'm forcing a reading of the film that is in keeping with the conventions of melodrama. It probably doesn't help that I just started reading Lauren Berlant's The Female Complaint (on melodrama and sentimentality in American culture, with what looks to be a fair bit devoted to Golden Age-era film) and that this is where my mind is at right now (I didn't time the starting the book and watching the film at the same time; it was just Madame's turn in my PVR queue). The "superficially superficial" arrangement certainly complicates things, though, in that it renders Louise far more ambiguous than the usual sentimental heroine.

To me it's clear Ophuls wants us to see she's a silly woman undeserving of both De Sica and Boyer's love but it's not unsympathetic.

I don't develop a rooting interest in film like this (except for everyone to get their heart broken, since they will)... unless the deck is reslly stacked, like against Joan Fontaine in Letter from an Unknown Woman. (And the Jourdan character is even worse in the Stefan Zweig novella.)

The resurrected 1940 film From Mayerling to Sarajevo:

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/an-imperial-romance-max-ophulss-from-mayerling-to-sarajevo

http://filmforum.org/film/from-mayerling-to-sarajevo-film-page

saw this 1936 film tonight, almost up to Brody's rave, def anticipates La Ronde, Letter etc.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/max-ophulss-unheralded-masterwork-the-tender-enemy

i had no idea danielle darrieux was still alive, but hey she's 95 today

She's still around and now 99. Despite this: http://en.mediamass.net/people/danielle-darrieux/deathhoax.html

Bonne anniversaire, ma chérie!

Not actually her birthday today btw, wouldn't want to be accused of initiating another internet hoax... not that I started the first one.

D.D. 100

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/cinematic-immortality-danielle-darrieux-turns-100

went to a double feature of 'lola montes' (which i'd not seen before - admired it more than loved it) and a fairly beat-up/badly subtitled print of 'liebelei' (1933) tonight. marcel ophuls (who turns 90 this year and who worked on LM) did a q&a in-between the films. choicest quote: "my father didn't love courtesans, he loved whores"

Adieu Danielle Darrieux.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19k5VILpyzw

obits and tributes

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5051-the-daily-danielle-darrieux-1917-2017

je ne vous aime pas
je ne vous aime pas
je ne vous aime pas

looking good

https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/letter-from-an-unknown-woman-2017

Molly Haskell on Letter:

Some essayists have felt that Ophuls completely identified with his heroine and expected the same of his audience. It’s true he shared with his female characters a feeling of displacement, an alienation from the culture at large. Their preoccupation with fate and chance give their stories an air of ephemerality....

In watching it again, I find that Stefan has become every bit Lisa’s equal, a vividly imagined lost soul as captivating as he is heartbreaking. Hardly less poignant though with little screen time are the son, Stefan Jr. (Leo B. Pessin), and the husband (Marcel Journet), one of those military men (like Charles Boyer in Madame de) whose conventional views and demeanor mask an obvious depth of feeling. Johann represents correct society, but also the ideals of duty and obligation, by no means trivial. He even married her with the full knowledge of her affair and the child’s parentage. Indeed, she will be urging the boy to call Johann Father even as she is leaving him forever, leaving a ten-year-old Stefan who needs and can appreciate her love for the adult and dissipated Stefan who can’t. And here’s the crux of it: if Stefan repeatedly fails to see her clearly, fails to recognize her as the savior who might redeem his life and vocation, so she fails to appreciate the unlikelihood of his transformation, and especially the depth of his degradation at the end. Rarely has the nature of love as fantasy been so richly understood or so exquisitely expressed.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/ive-seen-somewhere-soulmates-ophulss-letter-unknown-woman/

Just watched Liebelei (1933, a well-worn and poorly subtitled copy on YouTube). The "military men (like Charles Boyer in Madame de) whose conventional views and demeanor mask an obvious depth of feeling" are in full effect--Fritz's duel with the baron is negotiated in high-level discussions of the sort one would associate with an armistice treaty. And Dori, Fritz' playboy roommate, when faced with serving as Fritz' second in that duel, is so disgusted by the prospect that he talks of resigning his commission and emigrating to a Brazil coffee plantation.

I suppose it's oversimplification to reduce all of Ophuls' films to "love never wins in the end, but it's glorious while it lasts"?

I like that all of the Max Ophuls films I have seen now seem to focus on a series of coincidences or connected themes

still have to see Letter From an Unknown Woman and The Reckless Moment

uh yeah

looks like Letter From an Unknown Woman is on youtube

really liked The Earrings of Madame de... and Lola Montès

re: Madame de..., don’t fully understand it, but I like the quote from Jacques Rivette: "a difficult work, in the fullest sense of the word, even in its writing, one in which everything aims to disconcert, distract the viewer from what is essential through the accumulation of secondary actions, wrong turns, repetitions and delays; a work in which the picturesque tries hard to conceal the pathetic."

also love La Ronde

“but Le Ronde killed me, I was unprepared for something so self-conscious or sexed up, you usually don't get both done equally well: 10 episodes where a couple gets together, connected by one of the characters wandering off, vaguely discontent to dreamily encounter their next partner.”

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:58 AM (eleven years ago)

watched Lola Montès again, it really is beautiful, I’m impressed with Max Ophuls as a director, and his films seem completely distinct from everyone else’s

I wish I could even like Lola!

what did you dislike about it?

still haven't seen Letter From an Unknown Woman or The Reckless Moment

It's stilted in a way those films you cited (Earrings de Madame de..., even La Ronde) aren't. But I've long suspected Lola is one of those Great Films I'll wrestle with for decades. I've read beautiful defenses.

*you cite aren't.

it does have a more stilted quality with all of the spectacle and ceremony, but I was kind of thrilled by that, and I liked that the flashbacks were the heart of it

You're right. He was moving into another manner.

Recently watched Madame de ... with someone who found the title character the weak link; she didn't understand why the men were so smitten. The only defense I could mount was that she does have amazing chemistry with Donati, and she becomes more compelling once her jealous husband makes miserable.

Were they smitten? The most tragic part of the film is the depth of Boyer's commitment, as he discovers on his own. He insists on wanting a friendship (l'amitié) even if they don't sleep together; she wants something absolute, thus violating the terms of the times. But I wouldn't say he was smitten with his wife in any modern sense.

and the way Boyer modulates irony enough to hint at his regard for Louise is exquisite; it's one of my favorite film performances.

now I want to see it again