diving into history
by Douglas Messerli
Anette Wadenant and Max Ophuls (adaptation from a novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent), Jacques Natanson (dialogue), Max Ophuls (director) Lola Montès / 1955, USA 1959
It is odd even to think that the original audiences could be so insensitive to this beautiful film. True that the 1950s filmgoers might not be prepared for a work that is so obviously artificed, and that reveals much of its story through tableaux vivant and circus acts. Today, Ophuls' masterpiece—a word I rarely use in writing on film—seems to bear a closer relationship to Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge than to any Hitchcock thriller of the day. Certainly Ophuls use of color out-does even Luhrmann's vivid palette. More obviously, Ophuls' work is not a coarse frenzy of action, but a carefully nuanced movement of the camera and actors that almost literally cuts and shapes the work before our very eyes. Moreover Ophuls' work fits very nicely with the both the thematics and artificed "reality" of theater played out in Jean Renoir's theatrical trilogy: "La Carousse d'Or (1952), French Cancan (1954), and Elena et les hommes (1956). So why did Ophuls' work displease its original audiences?
I was not there, and I suspect any speculation I might make could be met with more knowledgeable suggestions. What is obvious is that Renoir's relationship with strong, sexual women within highly theatrical settings, is located almost entirely in the past. There is almost a kind of nostalgia, lovely as it, is Renoir's films. The forceful courtesans of his works, it is clear, do not, cannot exist in contemporary life.
So too does Ophuls, using his somewhat stolid and stony-faced actress Martine Carol in contradictory ways, present Lola in numerous opposing positions. She first appears almost as a kind of statue, a representation of herself sitting atop spinning platters at the circus, then lounging as a supine trophy in Liszt's coach, unhappy with her state. Through nearly all the Liszt scenes she lies in bed, bored or pretending to sleep.
Yet later Ophuls and his camera follow her movements vertically and horizontally as she moves straight up, at angles, and out upon the trapeze from which she will eventually make her final dive, which we fear, may end her life.
I would not suggest, however, that Ophuls really asks for sympathy, even empathy. All that is wondrous about Lola is that she is nearly unstoppable, that she turns the world into action, immediately leaving anything that is dying or dead behind. Like Ophuls' ever-moving camera, she is a life force, willing to put her own being, every night, on the line. In the end, she dives to survive once again. Our final glimpse of her is behind a cage-like construction to where the males of the circus audience are invited to come forward and kiss her hand, as if the very touch of her might regenerate their lives.
It might useful be to remember that the real Lola Montés, after having lived even a busier life than that depicted upon the screen, died at the early age of 42.
Los Angeles, November 14, 2011
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