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43 out of 48 people found the following review useful:
A film of bittersweet charm, 21 February 2005

Author: theowinthrop from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Max Ophuls was an exceptionally good director, best recalled for "Le Ronde", "The Earings of Madame D", "Lola Montez", and this film - his best Hollywood movie. He could capture the charm of the Europe of the 19th Century but he was realistic enough to admit two things: the social system was hardly fair with it's layers of classes and their appointed rankings, and love was glorious, but ephemeral. It is hard to select his best movie, but once you see any you can't forget them. I personally like "Letter From An Unknown Woman" more than "Le Ronde" and "Lola Montez", but I feel that both of the others are certainly worth watching and watching again.

The film follows Louis Jourdan's last night alive. You don't realize this while the film goes on, but it is centered on that. A philanderer who has wasted a promising career as a concert pianist (he is an unsuccessful version of Franz Liszt, who also had many love affairs - including one with Lola Montez), he has received a challenge to a duel from the husband of one. Actually it turns out this is the Austrian Baron (Marcel Journet) who was married to Joan Fontaine, and (although it does not immediately register) the husband and his second are seen at the start of the film watching Jourdan's apartment. Jourdan has returned home to quickly pack a bag, in order to flee the outraged husband - as he has probably has done many times - but he would not have had a real chance.

Jourdan is interrupted by his silent servant (Art Smith) who hands him a letter. It is the last letter ever written by Fontaine, and it details her lifelong adoration and love for Jourdan, which was met by him only once or twice in all these years - once when they spent the night together in an amusement park, and once when they met years later, when she had gotten married. Jourdan was always charming and intense, but he was always looking for the immediate gratification of his sexual desires. Fontaine, of course, hoped for a lifetime's satisfaction. She has had a son by Jourdan, and it led to some economic difficulties, but Journet (whom she knew as a military cadet) has always loved her and is willing to accept her and the boy as his own. Part of the tragedy of the story is that the Austrian Baron's decency can't make headway against Fontaine's fatal fascination with this pianist. The boy dies from an illness he accidentally gets on a railway trip. Fontaine dies from the same illness while trying to care for the boy, but lives long enough to write her letter.

With full irony, after the shattering experience of learning he was this loved and had a son, and had thoughtlessly thrown both away, Jordan still does not know Fontaine's name. Art Smith's character, the loyal servant, has no lines. This may be due to his pronounced American voice (see his performances in "In A Lonely Place" and "Ride The Pink Horse" to hear his voice), but it makes his quiet, kindly role all the more effective as a representative of either conscience or humanity. Jordan asks what Fontaine's name was, and Smith writes it down and gives it to him. It is now daybreak, and Jordan can turn coward and run (supposedly - don't forget Journet is downstairs watching), or bravely go to the field of honor and die. He chooses the latter to be united with his family.

It is a wonderful film with lovely touches: the fake railway journey in the amusement park, and the musician's coffee club in Vienna are two of them. It is a lovely film, and one of the most tragic to watch. I can easily recommend it.

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35 out of 40 people found the following review useful:
Subversive Romance, 28 August 2004

Author: limshun from Brooklyn, NY

This has to be one of my all time favorite films. Ophuls is perhaps the most graceful and elegant film-maker ever. Here in Letter from an Unknown Woman, he is at his most romantic. Though the romance is only a fantasy (and so beautifully subverted by Ophuls graceful choreography and merciless sense of irony), passion is nevertheless king (or queen). I have never seen a film celebrate love in quite this way. It reminds me of one of the most beautiful lines in cinema from Altman's "Gosford Park" when Sophie Thompson says, "I believe in love. Not just getting it... giving it. I think as long as you can love somebody, whether or not they love you, then it's worth it." Ophuls' entire film plays with this very notion. Lise's fanatical love (and obsession) is requited not by Stefan but by Ophuls himself, and of course by weepy viewers like me and hopefully you too.

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30 out of 33 people found the following review useful:
Vienna at its most romantic., 27 April 2004
Author: dbdumonteil

An admirable scene sums up the whole movie:Stefan and Liza are aboard a "train" and they "travel".It's actually a fixed train,and some kind of stagehand forwards a chocolate box scenery :Venice ,Switzerland... In the real world ,trains are ominous messengers of death and despair:it's a train which takes Stefan away after their affair,a train which takes the young boy to his death.

Stefan (Jourdan)lives his selfish life without seeing anything.Ophuls(spelled Opuls in the cast and credits) shows him as a handsome nice young man,but if you look with care,you'll notice it's always Liza(Fontaine)who's looking at him with love.Jourdan seems to care but actually he knows so many women that he acts as if he's in a play:Liza's admiration means nothing to him who is a ladykiller-see the scene when Liza comes back from the station- and a celebrated musician adulated by the crowds.Liza is the romantic woman,with a zest of touch of Madame Bovary thrown in -it's not a coincidence if Minnelli chose Jourdan as Madame Bovary's lover in his eponymous movie the very same year-For her,there must be only one love ,and she's prepared to give it all.

Joan Fontaine had perhaps never been so good as here.Her whole life ,as she writes her letter (the movie is a flashback ) could have been written in the past conditional.Main influence is certainly that of John Stahl and his "only yesterday" (1933)in which Margaret Sullavan wrote John Boles such a letter.Even the young boy is present in both movies.The last page of the letter,ink-stained (or tear-stained?)takes the audience to a peak of emotion.The final predates the ending of Ophuls's "Madame de" (1953),and the scene on the "train" ,an imitation of life ,the big circus of "Lola Montes" (1955)

This is probably Louis Jourdan's best part as well.A French actor,he was never that much popular in his native country ,and he found his best parts in the US ,be it artistically (Ophuls ,Hitchcock and Minnelli) or commercially (Octopussy) speaking.

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32 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
Max Ophulus' American Masterpiece, 4 July 1999

Author: Rigor from Chicago, USA

All of Ophulus films are remarkable achievements of content and form, but, this film is certainly his greatest contribution to cinema in the USA, and arguably his greatest film of any period. It is the intoxicatingly bittersweet tale of the obsessive love a young girl (Joan Fontaine) develops for a rougish pianist (Louis Jordan) that remains throughout each charcters life, long after most school-girl crushes have faded away. Fontaine charcter is so convincingly and sympathetically drawn that we are pulled into her desire for this rather self-possessed artist against our own rational thoughts. And as the film progresses Fontaine's attraction to the artist begins to deepen and humanize the audiences response to him. This film is deeply concerned with a woman's role under patriarchy and the limitations of "romantic" love as a form of fulfillment. It is also a well thought out examination of the idea of the "artistic" life as offering the possibilities of either liberation or entrapment.

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28 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
A European masterpiece, made in the USA, 18 August 2001
Author: Geofbob from London, England

In terms of its construction - eg scenario and acting; recreation of 1900s Vienna; camera angles, movement, and lighting; editing etc - Max Ophuls' 1948 b&w film is rightly regarded as a masterpiece; but I think the term "American Masterpiece" is questionable. The movie was almost certainly not as Ophuls would ideally have wished, due to the notorious Hays Code. His next two Hollywood movies were films noirs, and he moved back to more congenial Europe for the cynical La Ronde, which he almost certainly could not have made in the US.

We're also entitled to raise an eyebrow at the movie's usual categorisation as a "tear jerker" and "woman's picture". No doubt, when it was released, and even today, many women (and some men) would unquestioningly identify with Lisa Berndl (Joan Fontaine), who maintains a deep love, from girlhood through to early middle age, for the handsome pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), who increasingly shows himself to be a shallow, selfish philanderer; like her, they would fantasise about how they could change his ways, and help him return to the concert stage; and they would weep at the tragic end to Lisa's and their dreams.

But one of the brilliant aspects of this film lies in the way Ophuls maintains enough distance from his characters and situations to allow us, if we wish, to view the movie with a more sardonic eye; to see Lisa - whether due to mental or moral weakness - as failing to grow up; to have no illusions about Stefan's failings as a man or a pianist; and to see his impending death in the duel as a joke played on him by Lisa from her grave - because had her letter not been so long he would have had time to flee Vienna as he originally intended!

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26 out of 36 people found the following review useful:
Never have I seen such a masterpiece!, 31 December 2005

Author: Classic_Vintage_Beauty from United Kingdom

never have I seen such a masterpiece. Such a simple story, such a MASTERPIECE! Joan Fontaine plays Lisa, a woman who loves a man far too much. A the start, a man arrives home in order to find a letter written for him from a woman that he never knew. As he begins to read it, it unfolds the story of Lisa Bendl, first a teenager mesmerized by his music (he was a pianist of the finest kind) then a young woman, then a married woman in her 3o's. She encounters some men in her pressence but she reserves herself from him, even though he does not know her. When she has to move town when a teenager, she still thinks and wishes to be with him and with his mesmerizing music. So when a colorel proposes to her one day, she says no and runs away to her old town. He mets her and seems like the most perfect wonderful man for her. He has a child with her one night and promises to return to her in 2 weeks after his piano concert in Italy. He never returns and she gets married and still keeps him in mind as she is still in love with him. Their eyes meet 10yrs later in an opera. He meets her after she tries to run home(because she is still in love with him and wants to forget him) But he is convinced that he knows her of some sort (eventhough he never knows about his child) She.......... Please this is an undiscovered masterpiece, watch it!

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18 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
The reality of romance, 15 November 2005
Author: sandra small (sandi_small@muchomail.com) from gateshead, tyne and wear, england, uk

This is a well directed film from a director who appears to know what he needs from his actors, and camera operators. He especially manages to portray the lead character Lisa, played by the great Joan Fontaine very well. And Fontaine gives this renowned director what he wants. She plays both the vulnerable and later the hardened Lisa in her mature role adeptly. The very handsome Louis Jourdan, and the Vienna setting are turned into props by the director to exaggerate Lisa's vulnerability.

It is within Lisa's vulnerability that the audience can see how the concept of romantic love has been used to make women emotionally needy, which can then be taken advantage of by the likes of Jourdan's character Stefan. In the real world, romantic love becomes a commodity for transacting a deal which secures relationships. Therefore, women play up to the idea of romantic love, rather than succumb to it, and use it as a meal ticket for their security in a man's world. This is illustrated in the film by Lisa, who later marries a man for financial security, as well as respectability, as opposed to love.

After several viewings of this film, I have to say it's one of the best around!

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18 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Compare with the source, 4 June 2000
Author: dmburdic from Pontiac, Michigan

This film grows even more extraordinary when compared with its source, Stefan Zweig's novella of the same name. In the story, Stefan is a writer, not a musician. The film transforms him into a pianist, thereby insuring that his seductive art can work on the audience at the same time as it works on the heroine. This movie gets bigger every time it is viewed. It seems to offer new surprises every time, because of the perfection of its structure and the implicative richness of its mise-en-scene. The echo effects ("Two weeks!") take on fresh meanings, and there is even a good deal of religious symbolism to be found.

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11 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Marvellous period romance, 11 November 2003

Author: john-703 from Wales, U.K

From the (strangely neglected) master of romantic period confections- Max Ophuls-, an exquisitely beautiful and poignant tale of a teenage girl (played by Joan Fontaine) in late 19th century Vienna who falls in unrequited love with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdain)...

The sets, lighting, smooth gliding camera, costumes, subtly matched musical accompaniment and delicate but aching emotion make for something quite wonderful; it's a film of supreme elegance and extraordinary luminous fragility, a tiny hidden jewel box filled with moonlight.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
A sad love story, 31 July 2006

Author: Petri Pelkonen (petri_pelkonen@hotmail.com) from Finland

It all starts from a schoolgirl crush.Louis Jourdan (b. 1919) is Stefan Brand, a concert pianist, who's leaving Vienna to avoid a duel.Before he leaves his servant gives him a letter from an unknown woman.The letter is from Lisa Berndl, played by Joan Fontaine (b. 1917).In that letter Lisa tells how deeply in love she's been with Stefan for many years.It all started when she was living as his neighbor as a schoolgirl.Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) is a movie that Max Ophüls directed.I started watching the movie after about five minutes and I was too captivated by it so I couldn't stop watching it.It's a different kind of love story.Fontaine and Jourdan are perfect people for their parts.Joan Fontaine is amazing going from a teenager to a mature woman.The whole movie has a great casting.This movie is a true classic.A movie that will make you shed a few tears.

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