Max Ophüls
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Max Ophüls (b. Maximillian Oppenheimer, Saarbrücken, Germany, May 6, 1902—d. Hamburg, Germany, March 25, 1957), German-born film director. For his work in the German theatre and film industry, he used the pseudonym Ophüls so that he would not embarrass his garment-manufacturing father should he fail. But later the umlaut was dropped occasionally when he worked in France and the United States. The credits of Letter from an Unknown Woman from 1948 and Caught from 1949 list him as "Max Opuls".
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[edit] Biography
He started his career as a stage actor in 1919 but moved into the theatre production in 1924. Two years hence, he became creative director of the Burgtheater in Vienna. Having had 200 plays to his credit, he turned to film production in 1929, when he became a dialogue director under Anatole Litvak at Universum Film AG (aka UFA) in Berlin. He worked throughout Germany and directed his first film in 1931 with the comedy short Dann schon lieber Lebertran (literally "In this case rather cod-liver oil").
Predicting the dread of the Nazi ascendancy, Ophüls, a Jew, fled to France in 1933 after the Reichstag fire and became a French citizen in 1938. After the fall of France to Germany, he travelled through Switzerland and Italy to the USA in 1941, only to become inactive in Hollywood. Fortunately, he was rescued by longtime-fan Preston Sturges and went on to realized a number of distinguished films. He returned to Europe in 1950. Though he died from rheumatic heart disease in Hamburg, Ophüls was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He had made just over twenty films.
Max Ophüls's son Marcel Ophüls (b. 1927) became a distinguished documentary-film maker.
[edit] Works
Possibly the best of his early films is Liebelei (1932), which featured a number of the aspects for which he became known: luxurious sets, a positive feminist attitude and a dramatic duel between a younger and older man. His first Hollywood film was the Douglas Fairbanks Jr. vehicle The Exile (1947); once established, he went on to direct Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Caught (1949), and The Reckless Moment (1949) before his return to Europe.
Back in France he directed and co-wrote his two best works: La ronde (1950), which won the 1951 BAFTA Award for Best Film, and Lola Montès (1955), as well as two other fine films—Le plaisir (1951) and Madame de... (1953)—which capped his career.
All his works feature his distinctive smooth camera movements, complex crane and dolly sweeps and tracking shots, which influenced the young Stanley Kubrick at the beginning of his filmmaking career.
[edit] Filmography
- Dann schon lieber Lebertran (1931 short)
- The Company's in Love (1931)
- The Bartered Bride (1932)
- Liebelei (1933)
- Love Story (1933)
- Laughing Heirs (1933)
- On a volé un homme (1933)
- La signora di tutti (1934)
- Divine (1935)
- Komedie om geld (1936)
- Ave Maria (1936, short)
- La tendre ennemie (1936)
- Valse brillante de Chopin (1936 short)
- Yoshiwara (1937)
- Werther (1938) based on The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
- There's No Tomorrow (1939) starring Edwige Feuillère
- L'école des femmes (1940) play by Molière
- De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940) starring Edwige Feuillère
- The Exile (1947) starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
- Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) starring Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan
- Caught (1949) starring Barbara Bel Geddes, James Mason
- The Reckless Moment (1949) starring James Mason, Joan Bennett
- La Ronde (1950) starring Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Gérard Philipe
- Le Plaisir (1952) starring Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin
- The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) starring Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux, Vittorio De Sica
- Lola Montès (1955) starring Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook
[edit] Trivia
Actor James Mason, who worked with Ophüls on two films, wrote a short poem about the director's love for tracking shots and elaborate camera movements:
- A shot that does not call for tracks
- Is agony for poor old Max,
- Who, separated from his dolly,
- Is wrapped in deepest melancholy.
- Once, when they took away his crane,
- I thought he'd never smile again.
[edit] References
- Max Ophüls (1959), Spiel im Dasein. Eine Rückblende. Mit einem Nachwort von Hilde Ophüls und einer Einführung von Friedrich Luft, sowie achtzehn Abbildungen (autobiography), Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag (posthumously published)
- Alan Larson Williams (1977, reprinted 1980, 1992), Max Ophüls and the Cinema of Desire: Style and Spectacle in Four Films, 1948–1955, Dissertations on Film series, New York: Arno Press (reprint). | ISBN 0405129246
- Susan M. White (1995), The Cinema of Max Ophüls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman, New York: Columbia University Press. | ISBN 0231101139
- L. Bacher (1996), Max Ophüls in the Hollywood Studios, Rutgers, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. | ISBN 0813522919
