Letter From an Unknown Woman (Ophüls, 1948): Castle Cinema, 2pm
This 16mm screening is presented by the Cine-Real team.
Chicago Reader review:
'One of Max Ophuls's four Hollywood films, this masterpiece nearly
defines the film melodrama, complete with the genre's often implausible
twists--the lover who fails to remember a former flame, the child a
father never knew was his, the train compartment contaminated with
typhus. But Ophuls brings to life this story of the tragically selfless
love of Lisa (Joan Fontaine) for Stefan (Louis Jourdan), a dissolute
pianist in turn-of-the-century Vienna, with imagery that's at once
convincingly rapturous and humorously down-to-earth. A key moment in an
army officer's courtship of Lisa is interrupted by a marching band--but
with the precise choreography of ballet; a romantic "ride" in a fake
train car with painted panoramic views is twice interrupted by the
changing of backdrops. More deeply, while Ophuls uses camera movements
and written narratives to convey love's delirium, the baroque
architecture of his frames also imprisons the characters, denying them
transcendence, even happiness. Watch for a shot of Lisa waiting on a
stairway for Stefan's return: the camera films his entry with a giggling
woman from Lisa's point of view, panning right as they enter his
apartment. When the same shot is repeated (but from no character's point
of view, the stairway now being empty), this time as Stefan enters
with Lisa, we understand that their fate is foredoomed both by the
artifices of melodrama and by the cycles of human fallibility and
misunderstanding, which the form at its best so devastatingly expresses.
I for one am always brought to tears.'
Fred Camper
Here is the trailer.
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