Saturday, June 8, 2019

La Ronde (1950)


Academy Awards, USA 1952

Nominee
Oscar
Best Writing, Screenplay
Jacques Natanson
Max Ophüls
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
Jean d'Eaubonne

Commercial Pictures
Directed by Max Ophüls
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(DVD, Criterion Collection)

Ophuls uses a gimmick: a series of ten vignettes are interlinked by following one person leaving one love affair for another one. Each time, there is a subtle rise in social status, beginning with a prostitute and ultimately ending with a member of royalty, before the circle is completed back to the same prostitute. There is a "host" who also appears in each segment as a different character, a sort of omnipotent narrator. I suppose this was all novel at the time, but even the famed "Ophul's touch" can't save this from being predictable and just plain silly.

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