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"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," reads aging bon vivant Louis Jourdan from a letter found in his tiny hotel room. With tousled hair and a tux tired from yet another night of meaningless flirtation, he's startled by these opening lines and suspends his preparations to flee a duel in order to read the history of a love affair that he can't remember. For the rest of the film we're transported to the life of Joan Fontaine's awkward young Viennese woman, who has been hopelessly enthralled by the dashing pianist ever since adolescence. For a moment she was his lover, the emotional pinnacle of her life but for the philandering rogue simply another fling in a blur of women passing through his bedroom. This was Max Ophüls's first personal project in Hollywood, and he injects this exquisitely stylish romantic melodrama (based on a novel by Stefan Zweig) with his continental sensibility. Both lush and restrained, the endlessly moving camera tracks, cranes, and circles around the characters while maintaining a measured distance. Fontaine delivers one of the best performances of her career, vulnerable and yearning without lapsing into sentimentality--and ultimately showing a hidden strength as she risks all for one more moment with the love of her life. Jourdan is genial and callow, an empty figure faced with the meaningless of his life and shamed with self-discovery. It's a sensibility more European than American, right down the empty gesture that concludes this sad melodrama. --Sean Axmaker
"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," reads aging bon vivant Louis Jourdan from a letter found in his tiny hotel room. With tousled hair and a tux tired from yet another night of meaningless flirtation, he's startled by these opening lines and suspends his preparations to flee a duel in order to read the history of a love affair that he can't remember. For the rest of the film we're transported to the life of Joan Fontaine's awkward young Viennese woman, who has been hopelessly enthralled by the dashing pianist ever since adolescence. For a moment she was his lover, the emotional pinnacle of her life but for the philandering rogue simply another fling in a blur of women passing through his bedroom. This was Max Ophüls's first personal project in Hollywood, and he injects this exquisitely stylish romantic melodrama (based on a novel by Stefan Zweig) with his continental sensibility. Both lush and restrained, the endlessly moving camera tracks, cranes, and circles around the characters while maintaining a measured distance. Fontaine delivers one of the best performances of her career, vulnerable and yearning without lapsing into sentimentality--and ultimately showing a hidden strength as she risks all for one more moment with the love of her life. Jourdan is genial and callow, an empty figure faced with the meaningless of his life and shamed with self-discovery. It's a sensibility more European than American, right down the empty gesture that concludes this sad melodrama. --Sean Axmaker
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