The Grand Illusion, hot on the heels of its week-long Sirk fest, is offering up two months' worth of work by his only serious rival as cinema's greatest tragedian: Ophuls. Max Ophuls was born Max Oppenheimer in 1902 in Germany; he changed his name to Max Ophüls out of deference to his family when he entered the "disreputable" entertainment field. He tried his hand at acting, and also directed theater before moving on to film (eventually the umlaut was dropped as well). His film career in Germany, like that of so many others, was brought to a halt by the Nazis, and Ophuls' wanderings began: France, Switzerland, a brief stay in the Soviet Union, Hollywood, then back to France for his last films.
It was a career nearly as restless as his camera, which roamed and soared as no other had before, with more intelligence and purpose than any have since. As he craned across decorous ballrooms or spun around costumed circus performers, Ophuls made sure each exquisite motion told its own story. There is a marvelous moment in Caught, when James Mason and Frank Ferguson discuss everything about the woman Mason loves except the one fact Ferguson knows is most important. The camera weaves back and forth between the two, but spends most of the time lingering on the desk that separates them, thus avoiding what "matters" in the shot as thoroughly as the characters' polite chatter.
Ironically, it was the very sophistication of his visual sense that led many contemporary critics to mistake Ophuls for a minor filmmaker, dismissing his beauty as merely decorous, his style as shallow artifice. His skill with actors was ignored; his stories were seen as fripperies, quaintly old-fashioned in their reliance on the trappings of fabulous wealth, affairs with foreign diplomats, Bavarian kings, or celebrated musicians, and dances and duels. Finally, he's secured a position at the very tip of the pantheon.
To understand why, you can start with the first and the oldest film of the series: 1932's Liebelei (though I feel compelled to point out the print is rather choppy -- especially frustrating for a movie as fluid as this). A young soldier, his baroness mistress, and a kindly musician's daughter who catches his eye: Ophuls got all these from his source, Schnitzler. He then added the gliding tracks, which make the mansions and streets of Vienna look so much more regal than a strained budget would normally allow; the longing close-ups of affection beginning to bloom; the lovers' dance across a barroom, oblivious to the world; the final shot of an apartment and some woods, where happiness once seemed assured.
Liebelei is far from Ophuls' greatest work. Later came Le Plasir, with its witty shots through the windows and doorways of a bordello; Earrings of Madame De, tracing a love affair through the peregrinations of a pair of earrings; and his final masterpiece, Lola Montes, which is so stunning in its use of color and CinemaScope and so touching and assured in its understanding of love, that one can only dream about what wonders Ophuls would have given us if he hadn't died of heart failure at the relatively early age of 54.
Ophuls' son, Marcel, is justly lauded for his documentaries (Sorrow and the Pity, Hotel Terminus), but I've always admired Marcel Ophuls most for his earnest admission that his father's work is more humane, perceptive, and even educational than his own. Attend every week of the series (and catch up on the omissions on video, starting with the superb Letter from an Unknown Woman), and you'll get a thorough lesson on how film can capture time and motion -- and people in flux as they pass through both -- better than anyone could give you in mere words.
