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"Mußte denn das so sein, daß das, was des Menschen Glückseligkeit macht, wieder die Quelle seines Elendes würde?" The titular missive takes three hours to read, just enough time for a weary Lothario (Louis Jourdan) to change his mind about ditching a duel. He's the object of desire of a wispy adolescent (Joan Fontaine), embodied as an earful of Liszt before their first true encounter, she remembers but he forgets. "How long have you been hiding in my piano?" Her adoration is nursed over the years, the eventual consummation is enchantment made flesh to one and one more conquest among many to the other. (The couple's arrival at his apartment following their date is rhymed with that of a previous fling, the same angle at the top of a staircase surveys both.) Mother, wife, socialite, willing to risk it all after glances exchanged at the opera house. "That's romantic nonsense." "Is it?" The masterpiece of Max Ophüls' American period, his triste rhapsody at its most mellifluous, his velvety irony at its most barbed. The stalker's bashful ardor, her erotic wonderment at the objects in the musician's apartment interrupted by a mute Leporello. Illusion travels by train, painted backdrops at the carnival ride operated via pedal unmistakably like a hand-cranked camera. (Amorous solipsism is humorously pricked with a side view of the cellist at the after-hours restaurant, irritatedly chomping on sausage while the two lovers are locked in their dance.) "Nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured. Every step is counted." The Vienna of fantasy on shadowy cobblestones, the Linz where courtships are choreographed like brass bands—Ophüls' Europe in Hollywood sound stages, as distinct from Renoir's (The Diary of a Chambermaid). The heroine's crumbling realization of her beloved's amnesia remains cinema's most violent instance, the upshot is a suicide to fill the void behind Prince Charming's tuxedo. "Could've found what was never lost." Truffaut's The Story of Adele H is an intense analysis. Cinematography by Franz Planer. With Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Howard Freeman, and Leo B. Pessin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |