{"id":228,"date":"2007-03-02T13:02:46","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T17:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/228"},"modified":"2014-09-09T11:23:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T16:23:00","slug":"letter-from-an-unknown-woman-1948-max-ophuls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/228","title":{"rendered":"Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophuls)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Set in Vienna, 1900, same as <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/246\">La Ronde<\/a><\/em>.  My third Ophuls movie, and the third with horse-drawn carriages.<\/p>\n<p>Seems a straightforward old-hollywood love story at first, then seems a lot more grown-up and complex than its contemporaries after it&#8217;s over (and especially after checking out the DVD extras which conveniently explain everything so I don&#8217;t have to put in much thought myself).<\/p>\n<p>Joan Fontaine lives in the same building as a famous concert pianist and falls madly in love with him.  She lives her whole life thinking of him, but only meets him twice&#8230; once for a dream date at the end of which she gets pregnant, and again years later in a sad imitation of that date, where she desperately hopes he&#8217;ll recognize her, but he just recycles the same lines he used years earlier.  She flees again, and as she and their son are dying of cholera, she writes him a letter telling her life story.  He stays up all night reading it, forgetting to flee the duel he&#8217;d agreed to the night before with her husband.  Nice.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of graceful camera movements, one sick super excellent part I didn&#8217;t notice until watching the documentary (bottom screenshot) where she stands atop a staircase and watches him enter his apartment with a girl, repeated again later in the movie with the same camera position but with her as the girl.  The kind of movie I like somewhat while watching, and like a lot more when it&#8217;s over&#8230; worth seeing again.<\/p>\n<p>The novel by Stefan Zweig was filmed at least four other times.  Ophuls made this between <em>The Exile<\/em> and <em>Caught<\/em> during his Hollywood period.  The same year Welles made <em>Macbeth<\/em>, Hawks made <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/6415\">Red River<\/a><\/em>, Hitchcock made <em>Rope<\/em>, and the Italian Neorealist movement was taking off.<\/p>\n<p>Joan Fontaine, star of <em>Rebecca<\/em>, <em>Suspicion<\/em> and <em>Beyond a Reasonable Doubt<\/em>:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/images\/letterfromanunknownwoman1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Candy apple scene:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/images\/letterfromanunknownwoman2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Louis Jordan, also of <em>The Paradine Case<\/em>, <em>The VIPs<\/em>, <em>Octopussy<\/em> and <em>Swamp Thing<\/em>:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/images\/letterfromanunknownwoman3.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Suspicion:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/images\/letterfromanunknownwoman4.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Set in Vienna, 1900, same as La Ronde. My third Ophuls movie, and the third with horse-drawn carriages. Seems a straightforward old-hollywood love story at first, then seems a lot more grown-up and complex than its contemporaries after it&#8217;s over (and especially after checking out the DVD extras which conveniently explain everything so I don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[416,205],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1940s","tag-max-ophuls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9329,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/9329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}