Lola Montès (1955)
Directed by Max Ophüls

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?

Film Synopsis

By the 1850s, Lola Montès is one of most notorious women of her time.  Her love affairs with composers, kings and other men of distinction are legendary.  But now, her passion spent, her illusions shattered, she is finally reduced to the status of circus exhibit.   Night after night, she must perform scenes from her life in a circus tent before a crowd of sensation-hungry spectators.  She subjects herself to this humiliation willingly, as though to atone for her past sins...