Underplayed Gems

Lola Montès (1955)

Lola Montès poster
Directed by
Max Ophüls
Genre
drama film, biographical film, flashback film
Country
Germany, France
Runtime
1h 55m
Rated
6
Rating
6.9 of 10 from 150 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A famous courtesan looks back on her scandalous life from a circus stage. The film shows her affairs with powerful men and her eventual decline into poverty.

glamorousmelancholicfast-pacedvisually lushtragicintimatenostalgicsensual

What happens

Lola Montès is a 1955 historical romance film, and the last completed film of director Max Ophüls. Based on Cécil Saint-Laurent's novel La vie extraordinaire de Lola Montès, the film depicts the life of Irish dancer and courtesan Lola Montez (1821–1861), portrayed by Martine Carol, and tells the story of her many notorious affairs, most notably those with Franz Liszt and Ludwig I of Bavaria. A co-production between France and West Germany, the dialogue is mostly in French and German, with a few English-language sequences. The most expensive European film produced up to its time, Lola Montès underperformed at the box office but had a significant artistic influence on the French New Wave movement and has many distinguished critical admirers. Heavily reedited (multiple times) and shortened after its initial release for commercial reasons, it has been twice restored (in 1968 and 2008). The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America by The Criterion Collection in February 2010. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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