Letter from an unknown woman (1948) directed by Max Ophüls - restored and re-opened at NFT/BFI Southbank. A trailer here. Starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan, Letter tells a Viennese tale of aching love, staircases, pedal-powered backdrops of journeys that go nowhere and the pretty lies that you tell to others and to yourself.He, Stefan, a habitual chaser of women, a wasted talent, instinct shallow almost empty, undeserving the misplaced love from she, Lisa, the woman at 3 different stages of her young life, projecting onto his, if not blank, then vague canvas imagining a romance that for him was just one of a series of endless meaningless conquests. This is a beautiful witty movie tinged with delicious sadness, the dark ironies of unrequited love, of life's echoes, rhymes and circles. The film could be re-titled 'Love on a Staircase', from the opening to the end, stairs feature in beautiful long tracking and swooping crane shots; exquisite fluid movie-making that glides the viewer along.
To see both sides of this non-romance, the deceptions practised and the compulsive need to overthink and deceive oneself, you might ask of yourself, which of the protagonists do you act more like at different times? It is so risky to love anyone. You wonder how one beautiful memory can sustain an inner life, provide the oxygen for an illusion of reciprocal love. A neutral observer can see the lies when the deluded can not.
It is almost two stories - the delusion of one, the decline of the other. Their stories only barely intersect in actuality. But for one fleeting seduction he is oblivious to her existence (just one of many); her infatuation (he is The One), continues beyond any reality. His practised charm slipping into self-hatred, but both are destined to lose.
The knowing coyness of the earlier seduction reminds me of Joan Fontaine again a few years before in Suspicion (1941, Hitchcock) and her falling for another charming wrong'un, Cary Grant admiring her ucipital mapillary.
It is almost two stories - the delusion of one, the decline of the other. Their stories only barely intersect in actuality. But for one fleeting seduction he is oblivious to her existence (just one of many); her infatuation (he is The One), continues beyond any reality. His practised charm slipping into self-hatred, but both are destined to lose.
The knowing coyness of the earlier seduction reminds me of Joan Fontaine again a few years before in Suspicion (1941, Hitchcock) and her falling for another charming wrong'un, Cary Grant admiring her ucipital mapillary.
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