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Lola Montes (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Lola Montès is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts Montès’s scandalous past through the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she ends up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola Montès is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a meticulous, one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

Stills from Lola Montes (Click for larger image)

Max Ophüls explores the scandalous life of dancer and courtesan Lola Montes with a bittersweet empathy that turns melodrama into a tragic melancholy masterpiece. Using the theatrical re-creation of Lola’s life in a big-top pageant as a framing device, Ophüls contrasts the outrageous sensationalism of her reputation with poignant, poetic flashbacks that explore her many affairs, most notably with Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and King Ludwig of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook). Lola’s greatest tragedy is that she loved well, if not too wisely. If Martine Carol’s central performance is lacking passion, as many critics have argued, her quiet, at times seemingly passive demeanor makes her a veritable prisoner of her society and her reputation. Swept along by Ophüls’s sweeping camerawork, which glides through the film in a balance of intimacy and contemplative remove as if on the wings of angels, her life becomes like a cinematic ballet with Ophüls the choreographer and conductor. Peter Ustinov costars as the jaded circus ringmaster, who nightly narrates her exploits to a throng of scandal-hungry spectators, while she performs with a face hardened in indifference, resigned to her empty role as a figure of spectacle in a garish gilded cage. Shot in delicate color and impeccably composed widescreen compositions throughout by Ophüls’s regular cinematographer Christian Matras, Lola Montes is his most beautiful and restrained film, a fitting swan song for one of the cinema’s most sensitive directors. –Sean Axmaker

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Restored version touring in Belgium in 2008-9
Yesterday night I saw the restored version of Lola Montes in the cinema theatre in Gent, Belgium. The visual spectacle certainly deserves a big screen viewing. So if you get the chance go out and see it the way its makers wanted you to see it. Amazing that the colours still bounch off the screen. An entertaining movie and story.

4 Stars great restauration
I saw the newly restaured print yesterday in Antwerp, on a big screen in the filmmuseum and it is certainly worth it, the colors are indeed very vivid and it was an unique chance to see this in the original cinemascope…I understand that this restauration is going to come out on dvd later this year..;and although that is not quite the same as seeing it in the cinema I can only recommend viewing it if you get the chance..;for me it was not quite the great masterpiece I had expected, the story is a little too coy, the lead actress a little too undercooled and although the script keeps announcing the famous scandals of Lola the action is too subdued and stilted to warrant more than a mild yawn in these slightly more demanding days. This woman ends up a freak show and I understand the criticisms on the heartlessness of fame and a public ambiguous morality but in the end this is the story of a 19th century gold digger who got what she deserved and even a little more…so this is a film of style over substance, beautiful colors, composition and camera work..lovely!

5 Stars a masterpiece for all to enjoy
“Lola Montes”, the last movie from French director Max Ophuls, is about a courtesan’s colorful but tragic life. The fact that she is displayed and marketed in the circus shows society’s contempt for her lifestyle. The movie is colorful and the sweeping camera view is a sight to behold. It reminds me of a novel by Kafka, about some people being displayed at the zoo, and others go there to see them. She is at once celebrated and degraded at the circus, but definitely more humiliated. I don’t know if it is the best movie, “Casablanca”, “Citizen Kane” probably are winning that race. But it is a very fascinating movie. Maybe we are all displayed in the circus like Lola Montes, we just don’t know about it. Highly recommended to all.

5 Stars Finally a restored version is on the way!
Enough’s been said here about this love-it-or-hate-it Ophuls opus (I’m in the love-it camp). All we’ve had to look at for years have been washed out prints in repertory cinemas and the washed-out Fox-Lorber DVD, soon to be forgotten. Criterion is releasing the restored ‘Lola Montes’ on February 16th, 2010 on both DVD and blu-ray. I’ve seen some clips of the restoration and the colors once again look as ravishing as they were originally meant to be. Several minutes of missing footage have been restored, and there will be lots of extras:

* New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

* Audio commentary featuring Max Ophuls scholar Susan White

* “Max Ophuls ou le plaisir de tourner,” a 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of Ophuls’s collaborators

* Max by Marcel, a new documentary by Marcel Ophuls about his father and the making of Lola Montès

* Silent footage of actress Martine Carol demonstrating the various glamorous hairstyles in Lola Montès

* Theatrical rerelease trailer from Rialto Pictures

* New and improved English subtitle translation

* PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Gary Giddins

For those who love this film, I do believe this is what we’ve been waiting for!

1 Stars Still Lousy After All These Years
The issue isn’t whether this or that transfer is better or worse: this is a bad film that no amount of after-the-fact tinkering can save. Not even the great Ustinov can rescue this sprawling, miserable mess. The acting is cloyingly annoying, the story telling lurches like a carriage missing a wheel, the title role is filled by an actress who could put hummingbirds to sleep, and the music is like having a cream pie pounded into your ear. The crowds and critics were right the first time when they declared this film a flop upon its initial release. It’s still a flop.

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