Max Ophüls had already made one masterpiece (LIEBELEI/’33) before fleeing ‘30s Germany for work opportunities (and temporary safety) in France. Struggles & triumphs in Hollywood claimed the ‘40s before a return to Europe, dying in 1957, only 54. And everywhere he went, masterpieces followed. Somehow this Italian gig gets lost in the shuffle; his name as director suppressed in the credits. (For political reasons?) It’s both a step back from the technically fully conceived LIEBELEI, and a step forward thematically, with obvious parallels to his final work LOLA MONTES/’55. Isa Miranda stars (if only she’d played Lola Montes instead of Martine Carol!) as a young woman who can’t help attracting the wrong kind of attention and building a bad reputation: at school, between a wealthy father & scion, from their clinging invalid mother, she even arouses tensions in her own family. Beautiful & talented, we begin with her suicide attempt, then flash back to events that led the young film star there in a strikingly designed hospital operating-room sequence that uses a frightening gas mask winching its way down to cover her face and put her asleep. After so much bad luck in life & love, might La Signora be better off if she never came out of surgery? Ophüls struggles to get his Italian technicians up to snuff, his signature camera movements left bumpy, the use of whip-pans in place of edits (not a part of his mature work) jumpy, even missing their mark. (No time or money for another take?) But too much fine work & ideas in this melodramatic woman’s drama to skip; including Miranda’s abrupt mood swings. It’s both too much and frighteningly good. And note a debut credit for film composer Daniele Amfitheatrof, a Russian ex-pat who'd be in Hollywood by the end of the ‘30s, with masses of projects thru the ‘60s.
DOUBLE-BILL: Go Janus-faced with LIEBELEI and LOLA MONTES. Though Ophüls’ best lies in between. Late ‘40s Hollywood; early ‘50s France.
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