Max Ophuls - Lola Montes (1955)

Max Ophuls' final film (and his only movie in color) is a cinematic tour-de-force masquerading as a biography, in this case a dazzling fictionalized life of the notorious 19th century dancer, actress, and courtesan. A still beautiful, but weary and disillusioned (and, as we later discover, ailing) Lola Montes (Martine Carol) is first seen as the featured attraction at a seedy American circus, appearing at the center of a series of various tableaux depicting the scandalous events for which she is known. With a strangely sincere yet sinister and manipulative ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) providing color commentary, some of it very ironic on two or more levels, the movie flows between these staged recreations in the circus and the events as recalled by the subject. In a series of dissolves, the film takes us through her girlhood with her mother, interrupted when her mother's lover (Ivan Desni) becomes attached to the daughter; her unhappy marriage and its aftermath; romances with composer Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg), abduction by a Russian general (in the arms of Cossacks, no less); her affairs across the landscape of Europe with men great and notable; her thwarted aspirations as a dancer; and her romance with King Ludwig I (Anton Walbrook) of Bavaria, which led to her being made Countess of Landsfeld, and, later, to his abdication. The gracefulness of Ophuls' cyclical narrative, and the transitions between the recalled elegance of the locales, and the people with whom her romances and affairs took place, and the seediness of the circus -- where she is also compelled, in the course of performing, to perform as an aerialist -- were lost on viewers in 1955. And for many years the movie only existed in a version re-cut without the director's approval, in which the story was presented in linear fashion. It was only in the 1960's, long after Ophuls' death, that efforts were made to restore the original structure, and in 2008 the movie's original Technicolor luster was restored to its full depth and richness. General Complete name : Lola Montes.avi Format : AVI Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave File size : 1.90 GiB Duration : 1h 55mn Overall bit rate : 2 359 Kbps Writing application : VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2 (build 2540/release) Writing library : VirtualDubMod build 2540/release Video #0 ID : 0 Format : MPEG-4 Visual Format profile : AdvancedSimple@L5 Format settings, BVOP : Yes Format settings, QPel : No Format settings, GMC : No warppoints Format settings, Matrix : Custom Codec ID : XVID Codec ID/Hint : XviD Duration : 1h 55mn Bit rate : 1 705 Kbps Width : 688 pixels Height : 272 pixels Display aspect ratio : 2.529 Frame rate : 23.976 fps Resolution : 24 bits Colorimetry : 4:2:0 Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.380 Stream size : 1.38 GiB (72%) Writing library : XviD 1.3.0.dev55 Audio #1 ID : 1 Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Codec ID : 2000 Duration : 1h 55mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 448 Kbps Channel(s) : 3 channels Channel positions : L C R Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Stream size : 370 MiB (19%) Alignment : Split accross interleaves Interleave, duration : 42 ms (1.00 video frame) Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms Audio #2 ID : 2 Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Codec ID : 2000 Duration : 1h 55mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 192 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : L R Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Stream size : 159 MiB (8%) Alignment : Split accross interleaves Interleave, duration : 42 ms (1.00 video frame) Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms French, German and English audio; English, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048308/ Posted originally at KG by crasus, whom we thank Max Ophuls - Lola Montes (1955)

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greekhero (2011-08-15)

thanks very much!!!