Synopsis
La Ronde (1950) is Max Ophüls' elegant French romance, ready to watch online on iFILM. Vienna, 1900. A tailcoated master of ceremonies steps out, sets a carousel turning, and threads ten love affairs into a single chain where every lover hands you off to the next.
A soldier spends the night with a streetwalker. She gives way to a housemaid, the maid to the young man of the house, the young man to a married woman — round and round until the circle closes on the same street where it began. Nobody ends up with whom they started. Anton Walbrook presides as the storyteller, while Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon, Daniel Gélin, Gérard Philipe and Danielle Darrieux fill the linked vignettes — half the stars of postwar French cinema in one picture.
Ophüls stages it as one unbroken waltz of the camera: it glides through walls, ballrooms and bedrooms, never lingering, as fickle as desire itself. The source is Arthur Schnitzler's once-banned play Reigen, scandalous in its day for how frankly it talked about sex. The film took a BAFTA and earned Oscar nominations for its screenplay and art direction. It's for anyone who loves wit, gentle melancholy and old European cinema about how loosely we keep our promises. Stream La Ronde (1950) online on iFILM.
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