CriterionCast

Episode 117 – Max Ophul’s Lola Montès

This week on the podcast, the team continues their month-long arc of “romance” films by discussing Max Ophul’s 1955 film, Lola Montès.

Film discussion begins around 31:30

A big thanks to The 35th Annual Portland International Film Festival (February 9th through the 25th) for supporting the web site and podcast this week. If you’re a local Portlandian, you owe it to yourself to attend this year.

About the film:

Lola Montès is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts the course of Montès’s scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she has ended up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola Montès is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

Buy The Film On Amazon:

Buy The DVD From Amazon.com

Buy The Blu-ray On Amazon.com

Netflix Link / Hulu Link

Trailer:


Episode Links:

Next week on the podcast: Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter

Ryan Gallagher

Ryan is the Editor-In-Chief / Founder of CriterionCast.com, and the host / co-founder / producer of the various podcasts here on the site. You can find his website at RyanGallagher.org, follow him on Twitter (@RyanGallagher), or send him an email: [email protected].