Lola Montès
| Lola Montès | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Max Ophüls |
| Produced by | Albert Caraco |
| Written by |
Novel: Cécil Saint-Laurent Adaptation: Max Ophüls Screenplay: Annette Wademant |
| Starring |
Martine Carol Peter Ustinov Anton Walbrook Oskar Werner |
| Music by | Georges Auric |
| Cinematography | Christian Matras |
| Edited by | Madeleine Gug |
| Distributed by | Gamma Films (France) |
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Release date
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Running time
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114 min (original, lost version) 110 min/114 min (restored versions) |
| Country | France |
| Language | French / English / German |
Lola Montès (1955) is an epic historical romance film and the last completed film of German-born director Max Ophüls. It is based on the life of the celebrated Irish dancer and courtesan Lola Montez (1821–1861), portrayed by Martine Carol, and tells the story of the most famous of her many notorious affairs, those with Franz Liszt and Ludwig I of Bavaria. A French production, the dialogue is mostly in French and German, with a few English language sequences. The most expensive European film produced up to its time, Lola Montès flopped at the box office. It had an important artistic influence, however, on the French New Wave cinema movement and continues to have many distinguished critical admirers. Heavily re-edited (multiple times) and shortened after its initial release for commercial reasons, it has been twice restored (1968, 2008). It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America by The Criterion Collection in February 2010.
In the mid-19th-century, Lola Montès (Martine Carol) is a famous, past-her-prime dancer and courtesan who has led an eventful and highly scandalous life. (She supposedly holds a world record for number of lovers.) She is now reduced to performing in a New Orleans circus, where an impresario/ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) has both befriended and exploited her by making her the central attraction. In the course of a single circus performance — which dramatically reenacts Lola's life and career — flashbacks reveal, first, her affair with composer Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg); second, her unhappy youth and marriage to her own mother's boyfriend, Lt. Thomas James (Ivan Desny); and then her scandalous public breakup with conductor Claudio Pirotto (Claude Pinoteau). Along the way, her career as a dancer and "actress" has its ups and downs and she initially rejects the career advances of a younger version of Ustinov's impresario. In a longer flashback, constituting most of the second half of the film, her career as courtesan reaches a peak: her affair with the Bavarian King Ludwig I (Anton Walbrook), which incenses his subjects and leads to his eventual downfall in the March Revolution of 1848. In a final circus sequence, Lola — a "fallen woman" — ascends to the apex of the big top tent for a symbolic, death-defying plunge. She is last seen allowing herself to be touched, or kissed, by a very long queue of male, fee-paying circus patrons.
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Wikipedia