255. Madame de... (1953)

Running Time: 100 minutes
Directed By: Max Ophuls
Written By: Marcel Achard, Max Ophuls, Annette Wademant, from the novel Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin
Main Cast:Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, Vittorio De Sica, Jean Debucourt, Jean Galland

HAPPENSTANCE

I always usually try to open with something witty or informational as my first paragraph, however, after 900 of these things, I'm nearly wrung out of wit, so let's just get down to it, shall we?

Without a pair of diamond earrings, there would be no movie. We open on a pair of hands, clad in long white gloves - a woman going through her possessions, citing that she needs to find something to sell; for what reason, we don't know yet. She finally settles on a pair of diamond earrings that were given to her by her husband, on their wedding day. The woman is Madame de... (Darrieux) - who's name we never fully learn and she settles on the earrings only because she'll feel they'll garner the most cash. The next scene sees Madame de... arriving at the jewelers and selling the earrings. Coincidentally, it is the same jeweler whom her husband bought them from. I guess I should mention that the Madame is married to General Andre de...(something), who, in addition to being a General of the French military, is also a well respected count. Anyway...back to the diamonds! Later that night, while at the opera, Madame feigns losing the earrings, so that she'll have an excuse if ever she's asked about them. The General looks for them, but to (of course) no avail. The next morning, the General takes an ad out in the paper, citing that a pair of diamond earrings have been stolen. The jeweler, not wanting to be caught with "stolen" jewels, decides to pay a visit to the General, telling him how he got them and ultimately, selling them back to him. The General, in turn, gives the earrings to his mistress, who, during an unsuccessful night of gambling in Constantinople, sells the diamonds in order to keep betting. It is in Constantinople that the earrings are discovered and purchased by Baron Fabrizio Donati (De Sica), who eventually meets and falls in love with Madame de... Oh it's a scene, man!

SPOILER ALERT!

Before writing the review for Madame de..., I had to go back and see what films of Max Ophuls I'd already seen/reviewed. The only thing I knew was that none of them had made any of my TOP 20 lists, only really recalling the name Max Ophuls, but none of the pictures. As it turned out, Ophuls directed three films from THE BOOK that I BARELY remember: The Sins of Lola Montes, The Reckless Moment and Letter from an Unknown Woman. In fact, I just took a respite (just now) to read a bit of my Letter from an Unknown Woman review and while I'm really dissecting the picture, asking rhetorical questions and the whole nine yards, my memory just isn't jogging one iota. Anyway, it can't bode well for what I thought of those other three Ophuls affairs, which means I'm quite confident in calling Madame de... his best from THE BOOK. We'll see if it stands the test of time, but, while I didn't love this or anything, I certainly liked it well enough to be comfortable in calling it the best of something.

It was at about the one hour mark, when I said to myself, "You know, self, I think this would've worked far better as a short film". I must say, I was really enjoying everything that was happening in the first half hour. All the little coincidences that were taking place in order to get the earrings back into the hands of Madame de... (because you just knew she'd get them back) - I just love shit like that. Then we get into the love story between her and the Baron and my God how this film drags. The film spends a good forty minutes or so, with the Baron and the Madame just swooning over each other - "tell me you love me", "No, I don't love you, I don't love you", "Oh, it drives me wild when you say you DON'T love me" - and it's a long forty minutes. But then we get into the home stretch and some more happenstances and it all gets fun again. Then I realized, "Holy crap, this last chunk wouldn't have been near as powerful, if not for all the groundwork that is laid out for us in that slow, plodding, middle portion".

All in all, if you can get through the middle portion, which is a lot like a lake of quicksand, then it's smooth sailing in the first and third pieces. It really is a fantastic love story and it's a French film from the 50s, so you know the performances are going to be top notch. Hey, I was pretty stoked to get a look at Vittorio De Sica in action. I'm not even sure I'd seen pictures of him prior to this and somehow I thought the man that directed Umberto D., would look just as old and pitiful, but De Sica was a stallion in his day! Not the best thing I've seen all season - not even close, but it's probably the best thing I've seen in the last week and a breath of fresh air after the horrendous day at the movies I suffered through yesterday.

RATING: 6.5/10  Had that middle portion been spruced up a bit, I could've gotten WAY more into this and inched it into '7' territory, but you take what you can get.

MOVIES WATCHED: 992
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 9

October 25, 2015  7:31pm

301. Lola Montes/The Sins of Lola Montes (1955)

Running Time: 110 minutes
Directed By: Max Ophuls
Written By: Max Ophuls, Annette Wademant, Jacques Natanson, from the novel La Vie Extraordinaire de Lola Montes by Cecil Saint-Laurent
Main Cast: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Oskar Werner, Henri Guisol

TUESDAY BLOWOUT, TAKE TWO

So it's once again Tuesday (my Saturday) and I plan, once again, to knock out at least a few movies from THE BOOK and get closer to that short term goal of 901 down, 100 to go. I tried this a couple of weeks ago and only managed to get two movies watched, so lets aim for four between today and tomorrow and see what happens? First up - Lola Montes.

The ONLY place this movie is referred to as "The Sins of Lola Montes" is in THE BOOK, as all other sources have it listed merely as Lola Montes. Seems to be another case of THE BOOK making things up, as it tends to do with many of the running times and some of the plot synopsis'. Anywhoo...on with my, probably more accurate plot details. The bulk of the film is told in flashback form, with Lola Montes (apparently a real life historical figure, which I didn't know while watching) portraying a circus act. Lola Montes (Carol), an infamous scandal starter, dancer and lover, sits in the center ring while the ringmaster (Ustinov) tells her life story to the paying crowd. He goes from lover to lover and even touches briefly upon her childhood, before moving back to exploit her controversies. We hear of her affair with composer Franz Liszt through to their breakup, when the two promise to reunite one romantic evening and of her affair with the King of Bavaria (Walbrook). The whole thing really wasn't up my alley, but was beautifully photographed and featured some decent enough acting to give it only a mild thumbs down.

Boy, I've got to stop watching these movies set in the 19th century! I just can't take this overload of ancient history and the films are just as boring as they come. Granted, this one was a lot more easy to get into than Visconti's The Leopard, but still I could've done without it and it's place in THE BOOK is questionable, in my view. I've seen a few people complaining about the emotionless acting by Martine Carol, but to me that was the intent here. Here's a woman who's lived a full life filled with heartbreak and at this point, she has no emotion left to muster. A few notable pieces of the film that drew me out of my fugue like state were the scene where the Bavarian King demands a portrait of Lola Montes, only to choose the painter who will take the longest in doing so, so that he may have more time with her and basically anything in the center right with Ustinov, who really got into the role as the loud and boisterous ringmaster. People preparing to tackle THE BOOK will be pleased to know that this is not available on Netflix for "at home" delivery, as opposed to when I started and was forced to record it off of TCM. My TCM copy looked pretty crappy by the way, but served it's purpose in a pinch.

RATING: 4/10  I'm being extra generous there, because it's probably closer to a '2.5' or a '3', but what the heck, it's my Saturday! Gonna' go try to tackle something else, hopefully something set in, at least, the 20th century.

MOVIES WATCHED: 881
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 120

December 16, 2014  1:05pm

202. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Running Time: 86 minutes
Directed By: Max Ophuls
Written By: Howard Koch, Stefan Zweig, from the novel Brief einer Unbekannten by Stefan Zweig
Main Cast: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Art Smith, Howard Freeman
Click here to view the trailer

"BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS LETTER, I MAY BE DEAD..."

After "Letter from an Unknown Woman" there are only three films left for me to watch that come from the decade of the 1940s. To be honest, the 40s really haven't been too kind to me, nor I to them. As I write this, only ten movies from THE BOOK, from the 40s, have been granted an appearance on my TOP 20 lists and I don't have high hopes for this one either.

The film is told almost entirely in flashback. The film opens with Stefan Brand (Jourdan), a concert pianist, arriving home at night and finding a piece of mail. The mail (that is the letter from the title) is from Lisa Berndle (Fontaine) and we slip into our flashback. We head back to when Lisa was a teenager, in Vienna, living in a closely set group of apartment houses and remembering back to one day when a moving van showed up outside the residence. It was Stefan and he was moving into one of the vacant apartments. Lisa recalls being infatuated with him, despite not even seeing him for the longest time. She'd hear his music from the courtyard and happily daydream about the man behind the melodic tones. One day, as he's exiting the building, she holds the door open for him and is put into a dream world when he smiles back at her and thanks her. Time goes on and Lisa recalls her mother remarrying and having to move away from the building and resisting the idea passionately. The new family moves to Linz and Lisa eventually settles in and swallows the pill she's been served. Fast forward years later and Lisa is back in Vienna, working at a dress shop. Through a series of events, she and Stefan meet and he's infatuated with her. He courts her for the evening, as the two have dinner, visit an amusement park (in the winter) and ride on a novelty train. They (in not so many words) pledge their love to one another, but the following day, Stefan announces that he must go away for a concert. While he's away, Lisa learns of her pregnancy (by Stefan) and wanting to be the one woman who never asks him for anything, she doesn't bother telling him about it. Years later Lisa is married to a wealthy man and raising her son, but does she ever see Stefan again?

Honestly, I think I have to blame myself for not liking this one, as I just wasn't in the mood for this sort of thing last night. I was never going to love "Letter from an Unknown Woman", but I think under different circumstances, I would've liked it a bit better. In fact, I was totally taken by surprise by this movie, because going into it I had absolutely no clue what it was even about, so maybe that worked against it too. Judging by the title, the film sounded like a murder mystery and the word "unknown" alone got my mind to thinking that this film must be filled with intrigue. As it turns out, it was just a melodramatic love story about a girl who gets a crush on a semi-celebrity and kind of goes a little crazy. I mean, Lisa turns the stalker dial all the way up to '11' and somehow we're still supposed to be rooting for her, hoping to God she gets the guy. Look, if Lisa had existed in the real world, we'd be wrapping her firmly in a straightjacket and ushering her directly into her personalized padded cell. But this is Hollywood in the golden ages folks, where stalkers were considered romantics and Humphrey Bogart was ALWAYS...ALWAYS a bad ass.

Am I reading far too much into this or is it possible that Lisa made up the entire letter? I mean, what are the odds that this world traveled pianist is going to give this girl the time of day, let alone fall in love with her? If you think about it, we never get a confirmation from Stefan that this letter and the contents are genuine. Sure, he looks a little rattled at the end, but hearing from a stalker can rattle a guy...I'd think. I'd really like to think that Lisa was indeed mad and that everything contained within the letter is utter make believe on her part. Even the whole part about him not remembering her, when they hook up again, years later is just too hard to believe and sounds like something a man hating female might be disillusioned over. I'm probably totally off track and I guess what I'm trying to say is that romance like this just doesn't exist outside of the world of an overly melodramatic movie. Call me a skeptic, but it's true. The performances were fine and had I seen him in something a little more my style, I would've absolutely loved Louis Jourdan. He oozed that classic Hollywood star look and backed it all up onscreen. Fontaine was kind of *meh*, playing it a little too cool and quiet and I'll take "Rebecca" any day over this. All in all, it was an utterly average night at the movies and maybe someday, when I'm feeling extra sentimental and overly romantic, I'll give this one another go around.

RATING: 5/10  Another incredibly mediocre film and now I really need things to pick up to send this season off the same way it started...with a BANG!

MOVIES WATCHED: 695
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 306

June 2, 2013  8:02pm

220. The Reckless Moment (1949)

Running Time: 85 minutes
Directed By: Max Ophuls
Written By: Mel Dinelli, Henry Garson
Main Cast: Joan Bennett, James Mason, Geraldine Page, Henry O'Neill, Shepperd Strudwick

BLACKMAIL!

Moving right along, we come back to the 1940s and my first offering from classic director Max Ophuls and his 1949 Hollywood film, "The Reckless Moment".

The film begins by introducing Lucia Harper (Bennett) and retelling a story that happened about a week before Christmas, when, one morning, without telling her family, she drives the car into Los Angeles to meet with a man. The man is Ted Darby (Strudwick) and he's been seeing Mrs. Harper's daughter, Bea (Page). The trouble is that Lucia doesn't want him seeing her daughter any longer, because she isn't even eighteen yet and he's much older. Mr. Darby says that if Lucia makes it worth his while, monetarily, he'll leave Bea alone. Lucia doesn't pay him, citing that his statement alone would be enough to turn off Bea. Lucia returns home and shares the information with Bea, who doesn't believe her. Later that night, Bea sneaks out of the house to meet with Ted and ask him if he really asked for money in exchange for never seeing her again. He admits that he did and in a fit of rage, Bea knocks him in the head with a flashlight, spilling him over a railing, accidentally murdering him. Bea doesn't realize that he fell or that he died, as she runs back into the house, broken-hearted. The next morning, Lucia discovers the body of Ted and confronts Bea about it, who knows nothing. Lucia sinks the body into the river, with an anchor tied to his foot and hopes that it will be the end of her nightmare. The following day the paper's are reporting that a murder has taken place and that night, Lucia finds a man in her home, requesting $5000 in exchange for love letters that Bea wrote to Ted.

SPOILER ALERT!

Since I really spilled my guts about the Darren Aronofsky films, I think we'll keep this one short & sweet. "The Reckless Moment" was a fine film-noir. It wasn't the best film-noir I've seen this 100, but it wasn't the worst either. The plot is very simply and isn't stretched far, seeing as how the running time is kept under ninety minutes. The cast was good enough, with Joan Bennett and James Mason handing in satisfactory performances. I really like Mason and really wish I could find a knockout film starring him; perhaps "Lolita" will be that film. Anyway, my main problems with this film were the odd twists that the plot took. After Mason's character shows up, requesting money in exchange for the love letters, his character seems to go a little loopy, acting far too nice for the villain in a film-noir. He continues sending niceties toward Lucia, until he eventually falls in love with her. However, she's happily married, with a home in the L.A. suburbs and two kids. Nothing is ever made of his budding love interest in her and by the end, I was left scratching my head, wondering what the motivations of this character were supposed to be. Also, the film has a problem heightening the suspense. This film could've been chock full of suspense, but everything is kept contained and nothing ever gets far too out of hand for these characters. After the set-up in the beginning, Lucia is left to deal with Mason's character and then a man named Nagel, whom we never really find out much about and he's left to be this mystery bad-ass. It's good, but it's not so good that it needed to be included in THE BOOK. 'Nuff said.

RATING: 6.5/10  I'm pretty sure Max Ophuls has three more films in THE BOOK, so here's hoping the scripts get a little better and the characters are more fleshed out.

MOVIES WATCHED: 494
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 507

July 3, 2012  6:10pm