LOLA MONTÈS

(1955, Max Ophüls) In a garishly colored circus, the suckers line up at a buck a kiss with that celebrated adventuress Lola (French sex symbol Martine Carol), as ringmaster Peter Ustinov starts his spiel and the flashbacks begin. Ophüls’ first movie in color and widescreen was the biggest-budgeted French film to date. Approx. 115 min. SCOPE.

REVIEWS

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“Lola Montes is deeply secretive and skeptical; a sudden change in spotlight may turn regalia into tinsel, court life into circus arena, and art itself into self-exposure in a lion’s cage. Furthermore, it may be the only example of a rich, dazzling spectacle and not an outwardly ascetic film that works like a declared mirage, pointing to a central void, exposing its own illusionism the better to stress its transient immaterial nature – thus becoming a metaphor for film itself”
– Edgrado Cozarinksy, Rediscovering French Film

“Among the most visually ravishing works the cinema has to offer.”
– Dave Kehr