Episode 117 – Max Ophul’s Lola Montès

Podcast: Download (32.3MB)

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:

Netflix Link / Hulu Link

Trailer:

Episode Links:

• Rebecca remake
• Beauty and the Beast remake
• Criterion teases Being John Malkovich
• Lola Montes on Criterion.com
• Loving Lola by Gary Giddins
• Senses Of Cinema on Lola Montes
• Roger Ebert’s review of Lola Montes
• Slant Magazine’s review of Lola Montes
• Lola Montes on Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Reflection’s review of Lola Montes
• Criterion Confession’s review of Lola Montes

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