For his final film, the German-born master of the tracking shot took on a project that, at first, had little resonance with the auteur. The real-life Lola Montes (or Montez) was a courtesan, in the most polite terms -- a celebrity for celebrity's sake, a 19th century Paris Hilton if you will. Buried between the facts and myths of Montes's existence, though, Ophuls fleshed out a baroque (and with Ophuls, it's always baroque) story of ruination and obsession.
The director had the following forced on him -- the shooting format (CinemaScope), color film and Martine Carol, an actress Ophuls didn't consider talented. In the end, he used and abused all of the aforementioned, turning the entire notion of biopic on its head. As has happened so many times in the history of cinema, the money men butchered the final product, critics and audiences didn't know what to make of the film and, until the film's restoration and unveiling at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Lola Montes might have been a mere footnote in cinema history, championed by the likes of Francois Truffaut and Andrew Sarris.
Whatever Ophuls Wants, Ophuls Gets -- Lola Montes, a Swan Song
Stylistically and thematically, Lola Montes feels like a culmination of everything Ophuls had done up to that point, maximized in Scope. With theatrical curtains book-ending the film -- more than slightly recalling another towering achievement in French cinema, Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) -- Lola Montes exists within the confines of the performance. If Lola Montes doesn't quite eclipse The Earrings of Madame de... as his finest film, the circus sequences of Lola certainly stick out at as one of Ophul's greatest creations.
In morbidly exaggerated blues, reds, greens and yellows, we meet Lola as a prisoner of her own fame. Toward the end of her life, her desire to be free cannot compete with her desire to be seen and recognized. The tawdry (but fantastic) circus performance recreates her scandalous episodes, prompting a series of flashbacks leading to her rise and downfall.
Carol is, as many have noted before, a blank page, which Ophuls manages to work to his advantage. She is the object the whole production revolves around (often literally), yet Carol's (or really, Ophuls's) Lola has no real control. Life, as Ophuls saw it, is movement, a notion he expresses through his trademark tracking shots and Lola's lateral movements through time.
Fame yields little actual progress though, and in the end (perhaps one of the great final shots, again evoking Children of Paradise) Lola is a prisoner of the image she has concocted over time.
The low-key (once again, being polite here) performances from Carol and co-star Anton Walbrook (excellent as always, as the King of Bavaria) suits the occasion. With so much visual opulence, the film almost requires a softer, quieter touch from its performers, though it is impossible not to wonder how Lola Montes would have emerged with one of Ophul's choice actresses in the lead.
Lola Montes -- Criterion DVD Special Features
Picture quality is pristine, revealing one of the most rich Technicolor films this side of The Red Shoes. The stereo audio is mostly clear, although a bit echo-y in spots (particularly the scenes on the boat during Lola's adolescence. Both documentaries on Disc 2 (Max by Marcel, a look at Lola's production from Max's filmmaker son and assistant,Marcel and 1965 episodes of Cineastes de notre temps on the life and work of Ophuls) are informative, though neither is particularly gripping.
Perhaps the best "special feature" may be the booklet essay by Gary Giddins, Loving Lola, a studied appreciation of the work.
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