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Le roman is seen first and last, Max Ophüls on Goethe is a combination of Teutonic romanticism and Gallic impressionism. A poet turned clerk, Werther (Pierre Richard-Willm) with a copy of Rousseau in his pocket, "subversive literature" best kept under lock and key. The poem in the hat travels courtesy of the boy in the stagecoach, his sister (Annie Vernay) reads it eagerly so they're "a predestined couple" even if she doesn't believe in such things. They meet and dance at the fair, the kissing game in the storage room goes unconsummated, the Ophülsian preoccupation with the moment is already in full swing. ("Trop tard," she says, "trop tôt," he says.) The unhappy truth comes out mid-proposal, she's engaged to the judge (Jean Galland) so he sinks into despair and drink. "Autumn is coming. There's been no summer." The essence of the novel treated as tragic music, earfuls of Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert plus a certain melody from the Thirty Years' War. (It rings from the clock tower as a torturous reminder of the married heroine's true love, the protagonist meanwhile faces a cacophony of mocking laughter at the bordello.) The camera tilts down from a suit of armor and pans left to His Highness pondering the song while getting a shave, thus the would-be royal music critic in Amadeus. German and French and Russian cinematographers, all three attuned to the filmmaker's emotional flow. "One speaks of the past, one dreams, and suddenly reality recalls you." Dissolve from frantic prayers to the open field, the off-screen bullet that startles the equine reverberates to Madame de... With Paulette Pax, Jean Périer, Edmond Beauchamp, Georges Bever, and Geno Ferny. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |