MAXIMUM OPHÜLS

Cinematheque retrospective captures the sight and sound of 100 hearts breaking

By Jason Anderson

THE PLEASURE OF SEEING: THE SUBLIME CINEMA OF MAX OPHÜLS
Running Nov 9-Dec 9 at Cinematheque Ontario, AGO's Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas W. 416-968-FILM. www.tiffg.ca.

Does anyone in a Max Ophüls movie ever love the person they're supposed to? His is the cinema of infidelity, of clandestine assignations and lovers ducking behind pillars in the nick of time. The new Ophüls retrospective at Cinematheque Ontario is an ideal outing with whomever you happen to be seeing on the sly. Yet Ophüls rarely fails to note that betrayal has its consequences – wear a disguise in case you encounter someone you shouldn't.

Born Max Oppenheimer in 1902 in Saarbrucken, Germany, Ophüls devised his own disguise when he changed his name, fearing his showbiz career might embarrass his garment-manufacturer father. The rise of the Nazis was a graver problem for the director and he fled to France in 1933. His career also included stops in Italy, Holland and Hollywood before he died in Germany in 1956. Though he excelled at comedy and film noir – like two of his American-made films, Caught and The Reckless Moment, both cruelly unavailable on DVD – Ophüls' romantic melodramas have been rarely bettered for their gracefulness and emotional richness.

One of his earliest features, Liebelei (; Dec. 3, 7:30pm) is a prototypical work from 1933, boasting many of the same virtues as his more ornately constructed masterpieces of the '40s and '50s. Adapted from a play by Arthur Schnitzler, it's the story of a dashing lieutenant who's been carrying on with a married woman when he inconveniently loses his heart to a sweetly innocent young woman. His earlier callousness has a terrible impact on his new love, resulting in one of cinema's most tragic final scenes. While the decor and camerawork don't have the panache Ophüls developed later, the director already displays a deep understanding of the romantic rituals of men and women.

As close to flawless as any film, Ophüls' 1948 drama Letter from an Unknown Woman (; Nov. 11, 1pm) stars Joan Fontaine as a woman who is perpetually ignored by an ambitious pianist, played by Louis Jourdan. The story of her occasionally requited love is the stuff of the grandest opera, though Ophüls' visual bravura never detracts from the movie's quiet delicacy – there are moments when you can almost hear Fontaine's heart breaking.

His first feature upon returning to Europe, 1950's La Ronde (HHHH; Dec. 1, 7:30pm) sees him again return to the playwright Schnitzler with equally splendid if more cynical results. Pairs of lovers meet in picturesque locales and exchange pretty lies before one partner proceeds to another rendezvous – something tells me Ashley Madison would've done gangbusters business in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

Four years later, Ophüls would create a work of even more intricate circularity in The Earrings of Madame De... (; Nov. 9, 7:30pm), in which the decision by a general's wife to sell off some jewellery triggers a chain of unforeseen consequences and cuckoldries. The strict social protocols particular to the upper-crust setting – the idle rich are never very idle in Ophüls' films – fail to curtail the increasingly desperate nature of the emotions.

That contrast between a character's inner turmoil and the surface ostentation of both the film and its world is equally stark in Ophüls' final feature, Lola Montes (; Nov. 15, 7:30pm; on Dec. 9, Cinematheque also screens Lola Montez, a little-seen alternate version with several extended sequences and a wider aspect ratio). Taking to its furthest extreme Ophüls' perennial theme of life as theatre (and vice versa), this 1955 feature stars Martine Carol as the title character, a 19th-century dancer and courtesan who performs in a circus show dramatizing highlights from her scandal-filled life, which includes affairs with Franz Liszt and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The dazzling visual style and the narrative's playful self-reflexivity make this Ophüls' most audacious achievement even if it has a chillier temperament than some of its predecessors.

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