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.