Film Review
"I will have my revenge in twenty years' time, in cine-clubs."
That was Max Ophüls' reaction to the commercial failure of his
last (and arguably greatest) film,
Lola
Montès. Following its disastrous first release in
1955, the film's producers went against its director's wishes and
truncated it, re-edited it (simplifying the flashback structure so that
events took place in chronological order), re-dubbed the German
dialogue into French and slapped on a voiceover narration. The
result of this wholesale artistic butchery was predictably another
dismal showing at the box office. Critical reaction to the film
on its initial release was mixed, and only a vociferous minority -
which comprised François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean
Cocteau - saw it for the flawless masterpiece that it was. In
1963, the critic Andrew Sarris described the film as the greatest ever
made. Fifty years after its mindless mutilation,
Lola Montès was restored to
a near approximation of Ophüls' original intention (although
around twenty minutes of the original print remains missing).
Reaction to the restored version on its release in 2008 was
enthusiastic and it is now easier to see just why Truffaut and other
discerning critics of the 1950s were so blown away by the film.
Based on the novel
La Vie
Extraordinaire de Lola Montès by Cecil Saint-Laurent,
the film recounts the colourful life of Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, an Irish
dancer and actress who found international notoriety under the name
Lola Montez. The actress shocked the sensibilities of the
mid-19th century through her series of amorous liaisons with prominent
society figures and artists - her lovers included the composer Franz
Liszt and Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. It is not hard to see that
Max Ophüls intended the film to be a veiled allegory of his own
tortured existence. Despite his many achievements,
Ophüls often felt that his artistic ambitions were frustrated by
the practicalities of commercial filmmaking (and the shortsightedness
of producers). It was his disillusionment with the Hollywood film
factory that finally forced him to return to Europe, where he concluded
his career with the four films for which he is now best known:
La Ronde
(1950),
Le Plaisir (1952),
Madame
de... (1953) and
Lola
Montès. (He died before he could complete his next
film,
Montparnasse 19.)
Although Ophüls had far greater freedom in France than he did in
America, the fraught experience of
Lola
Montès shows that no filmmaker, not even one of his
reputation and calibre, can evade the commercial realities of his art.
Although the end result is breathtaking - a film to rival
Citizen
Kane in its visual ambition and narrative power -
Ophüls had great reservations over shooting
Lola Montès in
CinemaScope. He had not made a film in colour prior to this, nor
had he employed the widescreen aspect which, by the mid-1950s, had
become almost mandatory for big budget pictures intended for the
international market. Ophüls' aversion to CinemaScope is
understandable - the bulky cameras were restricting and could not
perform the elaborate movements which the director had employed
successfully on his previous films. Perhaps the most surprising
thing about
Lola Montès
is the extent to which Ophüls and his camera operators were able
to overcome the limitations of CinemaScope and achieve a comparable
degree of fluidity to that seen in Ophüls' preceding films.
Ophüls never allowed himself to be tyrannised by
CinemaScope. Whenever he felt the screen was too wide for what he
wanted to show, he would simply black out the edges or else frame the
central image with pillars and curtains. Ophüls' use of
colour is restrained but highly effective, and the chiaroscuro lighting
is every bit as lush and atmospheric as on his earlier monochrome
films. The CinemaScope format only comes into its own in the
spectacular circus scenes which frame the narrative - these are not
only visually stunning, but they drive home the abject cruelty of the
heroine's undeserved fate, to have her life reduced to a crude public
spectacle.
And who better to play Lola Montès than Martine Carol, an
actress of extraordinary beauty and charisma. There is a touch of
irony in the casting. Like the character she plays, Carol led a
life that was turbulent and unfulfilled, and she too died tragically
young. Carol not only had a remarkable screen presence, she was
also a very capable actress and her talents were eagerly sought after
by such eminent filmmakers as Abel Gance, René Clair and Roberto
Rossellini. In
Lola
Montès, Martine Carol gives the performance of her
career, and you can well believe that her character is one cursed with
an allure that no man can resist, the ultimate
femme fatale. Carol's
performance is as moving as it is compelling. It is hard not to
shed a tear in the final sequence depicting the cruel outcome of
Montès' celebrity existence.
Peter Ustinov, a born showman, positively revels in the role of the
circus ringmaster, although it is hard to make out whether he is Lola
Montès' tormentor (an exploitative sadist) or her guardian
angel. Anton Walbrook gives great entertainment value as the
half-deaf King Ludwig, whose adulterous escapades have revolutionary
ramifications. And Oskar Werner injects a badly needed note of
humanity towards the end of the film, in the part that led
François Truffaut to give him a lead role in
Jules
et Jim a few years later. But, as impressive as all of
the above are, none can eclipse the magnificent lead actress.
This is surely Martine Carol's greatest hour, in a film that might well
have been the theme of her own life.
Lola Montès offers a
salutory lesson for our celebrity obsessed society, assuring us that
fame is most definitely not all it is cracked up to be. Who wants
to end up in a cage being leered at and laughed at by the
hoi polloi?
© James Travers 2012
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Next Max Ophüls film:
Divine (1935)