Lola Montes

[charliechaplinfan]

This movie has at last been restored to Max Ophuls original concept of the film. With 1955's "Lola Montes" director Max Ophuls concluded his long career. He died shortly afterward. In many ways, this is his greatest film. The first film he used Technicolor was also his last. The cinematography, at its time, and in France especially, was new and innovative. By the mid 50's Technicolor was all the rage. However, only few directors could make a colorful film dramatic and not just fluff. Ophuls adapted the historic account of 19th century world famous courtesan Lola Montes to a fictionalized drama of her life. In the end of her life, Lola Montes is the feature attraction at a circus, headed by the money-hungry P.T. Barnum-like ringmaster played by the excellent actor Peter Ustinov. Through a series of panoramas and stunts her life is retold. The movie is mostly her flashbacks, though not necessarily in chronological order. She recalls how her mother sold her to a man she did not love. She ended that marriage and became a dancer/courtesan. A sex icon of her time, she drew many famous lovers. Among these was the mesmerizing pianist Franz Liszt, who rocked the world of classical music in the 19th century. Liszt abandons Lola who does not take long in taking up new lovers, each more powerful than the last. Her "ascent" - showcased by climbing ladders up to the suspended cage above the ring, represents her social climbing as a courtesan. At the height of her career, she was the mistress of the then politically troubled King Ludwig of Bavaria, the "Mad King", played successfully and effectively by Anton Walbrook.

Lola is played by Martin Carol, a French model and actress who in real life died tragically. For this role, Carol did not accentuate the sensuality or free spirit of the eponymous heroine, who was known to be quite liberal, independent and highly sexual. This would be because it was the repressive 50's and sex was definitely not accepted on film or on television. Carol portrays Lola as a dignified woman, adding a touch of class and even pathos. She's even a victim of a male-dominated and cruel society. She's a quiet submissive object of beauty, as still as the Odelisk painting she poses for "en rose" or in the nude. The sad finale makes us feel very sorry for Lola. While we think she will die from that high jump to the center ring, especially because she has just re-lived her hard life through memories, and endured much public inspection by shameless spectators. However, she lives, but barely, as a sad, resigned woman who is possibly living her last days as the object of attention, though this time to her own detriment. Her glory days behind her, she's nothing but a sideshow now, where men pay for a kiss from her.

A film with so much beauty in it that it's quite dazzling.

[moira finnie]

I'm glad to read that Lola Montes (1956-Max Ophuls) has been restored, especially since previously viewed prints seem to have been quite muddy and edited with a meat axe. The premise of the film, mirroring and recalling the life of the character played by Martine Carol, seemed to show a woman who is encased in her own beauty and trapped by society's reactions to her. Because this viewer, at least, the story left a chill, though I suspect that was part of Ophuls' point in telling it as he did, setting it in the context of a vulgar, sensationalistic circus. I felt that Lola's true nature was never entirely revealed as she slips from man to man, reflecting the needs her as arm candy, (especially for her husband, who comes across as a tin soldier), as an inspiration, (Will Quadflieg's rather heartless Liszt), a distraction and comfort (Anton Walbrook's Ludwig) or as a romantic ideal (as the Oskar Werner student character).

Martine Carol gazes at her reflection in one of Ophuls' favorite motifs--a mirror.

Yet the central character seems strangely absent, displaying an occasional edge of hysteria, exhaustion, resignation and a passive despair--the latter is most affecting in the last scene of the film, when Lola is finally going to perform rather than have her "adventures" described by the Peter Ustinov's ringmaster. Perhaps this is deliberately done to emphasize her inability to break out of her courtesan role in a repressive society (as was the '50s in many ways, as well as the 19th century) or I've always wondered if it might also have been due to Martine Carol's limitations as an actress? Ophuls has been able to evoke the very best from actresses in the past, notably Joan Fontaine in Letter From an Unknown Woman, Joan Bennett in The Reckless Moment and, best of all, perhaps, Danielle Darrieux in The Earrings of Madame de..., and Le Plaisir. Do you think that the restored version of this film has given the Montes character more nuance and dimension, Alison?

I must admit that the besieged, and dotty Ludwig played by Anton Walbrook was one character who evoked my sympathy, even as reality intruded on his palace (btw, didn't it look as though Walbrook and Carol were hiding inside the interior of a huge wedding cake when they were holed up in their airless castle?).

I am interested in seeing this movie in a better, at least partially restored version, since almost all of Ophuls' films are such a visual feast. The story may be beside the point in most of Ophuls movies, yet the style of presentation and the obsession of the filmmaker with the anxieties, delusions and loneliness beneath the glittering surface of the material world lingers long after the film ends. Btw, Criterion and Second Sight are reportedly issuing a R1 DVD of this restored version in Feb. 2010.

[charliechaplinfan]

It's certainly worth buying Moira. I'd read somewhere that Martine played Lola as Ophuls intended, you watch flashbacks of her life and never truly know her. She doesn't seem to have a motivation that makes her behave, she's almost listless at times, she's reactive to events around her and shaped by the people who crave her. Yet he creates enormous empathy for her, she's not the heartless girl going from one man to the other, she is quite fond of them and in the case of the king, she loves him yet she is forced to go out into the world. She joins the circus in a kind of resignation, she has tried many times to create a life for herself and after nrearly creating a revolt in Bavaria she resigns herself to the life of the circus. The circus life seems so very degrading and saps her spirit. The end has left me wondering about her life. The visuals are stunning. I'm glad it has been restored to how Ophuls wanted us to see it.