Film #3 of Gustav's Recommendations

” I know now that nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured; every step is counted.”

With a sad and heartbreaking story which addressees issues like destiny, love, dignity, pride and regret, Max Ophuls’ unappreciated little masterpiece, Letter From An Unknown Woman, is more like a story written by Leo Tolstoy, like the works of the Russian writer it takes place in dimly lit noble houses and chooses its characters from the upper-class society, it takes lonely characters and follows them across years as they go from happiness into misery and despair. What Ophuls does is that he turns his camera away from all the glamour of houses, clothes and concerts and instead focuses…

88/100

It's no surprise that these 'endless parades of arrivals and departures' that make Letter from an Unknown Woman take as much away from these characters as they give. It's these actions and the musicality of the performers' movements matched by the waltz the camera is frequently engaged in that creates Ophüls' tragic world wherein our central woman Lisa Berndle devotes her life to a man she seems destined not to be with. It's always a window or a door blocking Lisa from her love - or everything that, to her, represents her love - pertubed by her inability to reach him even through something most brittle. And finally, upon meeting, their attempt to capture missed opportunities and memories can…

The key moment of this film is the second goodbye at the train, which suddenly becomes a moment of horror for Lisa. This horror should not occur, but the non-diegesis of Daniele Amfitheatrof's score combined with the sudden look of shock registered by Fontaine's face tell us that this moment is tragedy. What has happened exactly? Her son has exclaimed as the train rushes out the station that he expects to see her in two weeks. This is of course what happened with her one time love years ago, who she then abandoned in hoping never to force any pressures on her. But as it turns out, at least in her perception of the events, her decision to leave him…

So marvelously complex, proposing a link between spectacle and romantic delusions. It's the only of Ophuls' American films to capture the dialecticalisms of his 1950's work, yet like those prior, remain true to its narrative constructs. Lisa doesn't just live in her fantasy world, she believes it to exist in the world - her first set of outings with Stefan: candle-lit dinners, horse-drawn carriage rides, Viennese waltzes. We see this all through memory, but its Ophuls' genius to have them resemble something out of a elaborate costume drama. This dialectialism is clear once we get to the fake train ride, at the fair. But Stefan is just as much a lost soul - at least in this memory, during their…

Another one for the melodrama module, there’s a thread of masochistic female self sacrifice in a lot of these movies, Stella Dallas and Mildred Pierce being the most notable examples, although this is up there too. 
The film is told mostly in flashbacks, as told by the eponymous letter, read the night before our caddish male lead is to fight a duel with a cuckolded husband, as written by our female lead. And tells the story of how she fell in love with him without his noticing and all she sacrifices out of love. There’s a richness to the metaphors like the scene at the fair that although providing many of the strongest elements, keeps the audience at arms length…

Joan Fontaine gives an all-time great performance here, her expectant eyes and bedazzled yet consistently melancholy face and vocal tone creating a character who is enamored with the idea of a man she hardly knows. It is as romantic a film as any, even if the two love interests have barely met, as Fontaine's obsession with Louis Jourdan's character pushes her across an entire emotional spectrum, allowing the film to explore—through the gestures of a brilliant actress—a range of love-induced states. Max Ophüls is no slouch either: the film is filled with brilliant shots that often play the fore- and background against each other, occasionally subverting the emotional condition of the former with patterns or expressions in the latter. Though…