The daughter of a Japanese nobleman sells herself as a geisha in order to save her family from poverty and dishonour when her father dies leaving debts. She meets and falls in love with a Russian naval officer, but their romance is threatened by the love of a jealous servant, and by the espionage mission that the officer has been assigned to.Read More »
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LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN is set in Vienna at the turn of the century, an era Ophüls loved and had used in LA RONDE and LIEBELEI. Joan Fontaine gives a moving, heartfelt performance as Lisa Berndl, a romantic young woman who falls in love with the handsome concert pianist Stephan Brandt (Louis Jourdan).
After a brief affair, which she takes for love, not seeing that he is just a philanderer, he leaves for a concert in Italy and never returns to the now-pregnant Lisa. She bears the child herself and later enters into a stable marriage, although one lacking the passion and love she still feels for Stephan. Ten years later, when he returns to Vienna, Lisa attempts, at the risk of her marriage, to see if he loves, or even remembers her. Fontaine and Jourdan perfectly project the feelings of a woman in love and a man too selfish to notice or care.Read More »
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A Viennese opera house, early in the century. In attendance are lieutenants Kaiser and Lobheimer. Two young ladies on the balcony, Mizzi and Christine, drop their opera glasses, hitting one of the officers. The Baron von Eggersdorff arrives in his box. Lobheimer leaves early for his tryst with the Baron’s wife. The Baron soon arrives home, in a suspicious mood. Lobheimer rejoins Kaiser in a café with the two girls. Lobheimer soon falls for Christine… The Baroness wonders why her lover has been absent for so long; the two now part for good. But the Baron learns the secret and discovers that a key still in his wife’s possession opens the lieutenant’s door. He challenges Lobheimer to a duel…Read More »
A young salesman may inherit a wine-estate on one condition: he can’t drink a drop of alcohol for at least a month.Read More »
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The story of a once-respectable woman who re-encounters her first love, now a successful doctor. Reduced to nude-dancing in a sleazy dive, with a son to support, Evelyne (Edwige Feuillère) borrows money at an outrageous interest rate in order to create a facade of respectability–and, it goes without saying, Georges falls in love with her all over again. But how can Evelyne maintain her bourgeois value and save son and “father” from the consequences of her fall?Read More »
Yoshiwara (1937)
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The film is set in Yoshiwara, the red-light district of Tokyo, in the nineteenth century. It depicts a love triangle between a high-class prostitute, a Russian naval officer and a rickshaw man.Read More »
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When the opening titles credit a film as adapted from a short story in the Woman s Home Journal, you know you re onto a good thing. The Reckless Moment doesn t disappoint. Max Ophuls last American film is a women s picture in the grand tradition of Mildred Pierce (1945) – dark edged and melodramatic, and dripping with moral ambiguities.Read More »
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In the late 1800’s, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, falls for Sophie Chotek, a Czech countess. He’s already a problem to the Crown because of his political ideas; this love affair with someone not of royal blood breeches protocol. The Crown allows the union only after the couple agrees to a morganatic marriage. The emperor further neutralizes Franz by making him inspector general of the army, sending him afield for months at a time. In June of 1914, fearing for his safety, Sophie seeks permission to accompany Franz to Sarajevo; protocol dictates that no army troops attend Franz while she is present. An assassin strikes. Their deaths spark World War I.Read More »