Synopsis
Lola Montès (1955) is Max Ophüls' final film, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A notorious adventuress has been reduced to a living exhibit in a circus ring.
An aging Lola performs under the whip-crack of a ringmaster (Peter Ustinov), who lets the paying crowd quiz her about any scandal in her past. Between the acts the flashbacks unspool — kings, composers, Franz Liszt, and Bavaria's Ludwig I, whose throne wobbles for her sake. The life of a woman everyone desired and no one loved is now sold by the ticket.
Ophüls staged it in colour and widescreen, his camera gliding endlessly through curtains, staircases and circus rigging — cinema where movement carries the meaning. It flopped on release in 1955 and was butchered in the edit; the restored cut later climbed onto lists of the greatest films ever made. Georges Auric wrote the score. It's a slow, melancholy, dazzling spectacle for viewers happy to read form as content. Stream Lola Montès online on iFILM.
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