La Ronde and Letter from an unknown woman : Max Ophuls' creative use of Setting
By Daniel Blumensev
In his essay of German master Max Ophüls’ The Reckless Moment (1947), William Paul writes: “[The picture] focuses on the temporal, both the reality of space and the specificity of location are central to the Ophüls’ film, granting it a sociological density I think lacking in the later works. (Paul 2004: 44). Although Paul hails Ophüls’ first American picture The Reckless Moment for its manipulation of the reality of space and the specificity of location, the director’s La Ronde (Max Ophüls 1950) and Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls 1948) masterfully employ these two elements just as well. In fact, in both the French-made La Ronde and in the Hollywood-produced Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls use of setting is so skilfully manipulated that it creates meanings beyond sociological density, meanings which henceforth will be analysed in this essay.
Starting off with Ophüls’ 1950 academy award nominated French picture La Ronde, settings are used expressively within it in two separate ways. Firstly, through the picture’s production design and set pieces such as of the symbolic merry-go-round and secondly, through La Ronde’s narrative film-within-a-film setting of the narrator/meneur de jeu’s Vienna 1950 film studio and Vienna 1900: being the setting of the constructed ‘film’.
La Ronde is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play of the same name, and is about, in Susan M. White’s words: ten “dialogues” between men and women [in Vienna 1900, nine out of the ten] of which end in a sexual act (White 1995: 239). One of the lovers then moves along to a new partner, then one of those two moves along to another, and so on (ibid). As the film progresses, the social status of the characters escalates from very low to very high and then back to very low, and characters from almost every social milieu are presented within the story (ibid). To give one an idea of how this all works, Ophüls’ picture opens with a prostitute, played by Simone Signoret, wooing a soldier, played by Serge Reggiani, to have sex with her. He does, and then the film moves on to show the same soldier expressing his love for, and ultimately again, making love to his maid, played by Simone Simon. The film then shows the maid having relations with a bourgeois young man and so on and so on. What distinguishes and dominates Ophüls’ version of La Ronde, to the fourteen-years-later remake by Roger Vadim, is the fact that Vadim’s version concentrates mainly on simply presenting exactly what Schnitzler wrote onto the screen, whereas Ophüls’ version slightly departed from Schnitzler’s work and included depth, by having incorporated a second temporal setting to the film, being Vienna 1950.
Ophüls’ other personal addition to Schnitzler’s play was a master of ceremonies, a meneur de jeu, played by Anton Walbrook. Deborah Thomas describes the Walbrook character as an extra-narrative manipulator (Thomas 1982: 74) of the ‘created’ Vienna 1900 film, being precisely the film in which the ten couples sexuality interact with one another. The meneur de jeu in Ophüls’ La Ronde has three roles: an observer, a creator and an agent (ibid). In the film’s opening scene Walbrook explains to the audience: “And me. Who am I in this story?...The author? The announcer? A passer-by? I am you. In fact, anyone among you. I am the personification of your desire. Of your desire to know everything….But I see every aspect. Because I see in the round. And that allows me to be everywhere at the same time.” As an observer, Walbrook “parallels the spectators of La Ronde” simply observing the sexually charged characters in Vienna 1900 along with us: the audience. As a creator, the meneur de jeu controls what the audience sees from the Vienna 1900 film, as Walbrook is actually seen cutting the film-within-the-film in an editing studio, gaily singing: “La Censure!” Lastly, Thomas calling Walbrook an extra-narrative manipulator is the most appropriate way to describe his ‘agent’ role. As an agent, Walbrook has the power to manipulate the Vienna 1900 narrative, jumping into it and, for example, leading the maid character Marie through time, guiding her into her next sexual encounter with the bourgeois young man, played by Daniel Gélin. These expressive uses of settings within La Ronde, being headed as well as, to an extent, controlled by the meneur de jeu, distinguish the picture from the play, giving Ophüls’ film a playful three-dimension aspect to it.
This double temporal setting aspect of Ophüls’ La Ronde as well as the meneur de jeu’s ability to jump between and control the two settings, evokes one’s contemplation about the legitimacy of the film’s narrative as well as of the Walbrook character’s nature.
Considering the picture’s first scene: the film opens with Walbrook strolling along a film studio and then down the night streets of Vienna. Although Walbrook tells us, the audience, that he is in the year 1900, the film begins with the meneur de jeu strolling down the studio in his modern 1950 cloak (and then conveniently changing his cloak for one of 1900), we understand that the film had in fact started in Vienna 1950. We then meet our first character: Léocadie: the prostitute, who rides into the frame on a merry-go-round asking Walbrook if he “Wants to come?” Walbrook tells Léocadie that he is not coming with her because he is not in the game. Léocadie asks what game and the meneur de jeu appropriately explains to her that he “Manages the merry-go-round”. Walbrook tells the confused Léocadie that the game will commence with her and that she should go place herself on the street corner nearby. The puzzled Léocadie does what he says and that’s how the chain of sexual encounters begins: the picture’s round of love. Since the audience saw that Walbrook also exists in the 1950 studio world of Vienna, this scene with Signoret provokes a number of questions concerning the meaning of the film’s expressive use of setting. Which setting is actually real and is not controlled by anybody? The Vienna 1900 setting surely can not be real as we see Walbrook telling Léocadie what to do, ultimately guiding her to make her move, initiating the round of love himself. We also know that Walbrook takes Marie through time, leading her into the house of her next lover, predetermining and controlling her life. Even though Walbrook does not control all of the characters’ actions in Vienna 1900, their lives are still not real as we see Walbrook physically holding the celluloid in which they are bounded in, in the editing studio, making it clear that these characters are not real but simply, in the words of Thomas: “‘Dramatis personae whose world is a created one’ (Thomas 1982: 74). Furthering this subject of characters in a motion picture, what is Walbrook then? The meneur de jeu is presented as a god-like figure, appearing and even altering some of the characters’ lives, as well as being in control of the Vienna 1900 film, editing it and thus controlling what we, the audience, sees of it. Walbrook’s character parallel’s both the Schitzler’s characters in the film-within-the-film, as he appears as one himself, clearly shown in the film’s opening scene, but also parallel’s Ophüls’ himself, as he acts as the overseer and creator of the picture. However although Walbrook obviously has god-like qualities, being the one who started the ‘round’ itself and guiding characters’ lives, he himself “[…is…nonetheless firmly located within the larger narrative world of the Ophüls’ film overall” (ibid) which makes his world of Vienna 1950 be false as well.
Another significant moment within La Ronde, which makes audiences ponder about the validity of La Ronde’s universe, happens right after Marie’s travel through time with Walbrook. After guiding Marie up to her new quarters of work, Walbrook moves to the right of the frame in which the camera pans and follows him, revealing to the audience that the diegetic soundtrack we have been hearing is in fact non-diegetic and the musicians playing it are simply on the right hand side of the frame. Walbrook then picks up a clapperboard, on which the next scene is written: ‘The Maid and the Young Man’, and then claps it, initiating the next scene. These whimsical set-changes within La Ronde truly make one ponder about what’s real and what’s not within this film’s universe, having possibly inspired Bob Rafelson’s Head (1968), being a surrealist and comedic American picture containing similar whimsical set changes throughout.
Production design and set pieces play a fundamental role towards La Ronde’s meanings through setting. Starting off with the picture’s opening scene: Walbrook walks through the studio set of Vienna, up the false stone steps and starts giving a monologue to the audiences in front of a beautiful romantic candle-lit theatre stage, with a painted backdrop of the Vienna skyline. Immediately, because of this mise-en-scène, the meneur de jeu’s speech becomes theatrical, as if we are watching a play and not a film. This particular mise-en-scène is the first occurrence of La Ronde’s theme of reality vs. fiction, a theme prevalent throughout the picture. After giving his speech, Walbrook moves on with the camera panning with him to the left which reveals a studio light in the foreground as well as a backdrop of Vienna who’s authenticity is ambiguous. Next, in a surreal-like way, Walbrook, having revealed to the audiences that they are now in 1900, suitably changes cloaks from a random hanger standing in the studio for no ‘real’ reason apart from to fulfill La Ronde’s time-shifting universe, creating what Thomas calls a playful resultant disequilibrium (Thomas 1982: 74).
Walking down the created Vienna 1900, Walbrook comes to the most central set piece within Ophüls’ picture: ‘La Ronde’ itself. This vintage steam-pumped carousel containing seating from the traditional horse, to ladders, a lover’s bed and swings, represents a number of things. From Walbrook’s opening speech, one understands that this merry-go-round is already symbolic for the way the meneur the jeu sees things: in the round, being able to be in all places at once. From the word itself, ‘The Round’ can represent circling around, flirting around, doing the rounds, being promiscuous, a round of drinking or a round of waltz, all being activities attributed to the ten characters in the film-within-the-film. Walbrook explains to Léocadie that love is a game and that, although he himself is not in it, he manages the game, through the merry-go-round. The set piece of ‘La Ronde’ is then understood as a visual as well as symbolic representation of the game of love, which spins and spins and never stops. It is now appropriate to say the witty saying: “Love makes the world go round, but sex makes it spin”. After the first turn of the round, or in other words, the first sexual encounter in the picture between Léocadie and the soldier, Walbrook, standing dressed in a musicians outfit, sees the soldier running away from the prostitute and comments: “One minute longer and the merry-go-round would have stopped”. Walbrook’s comment not only justifies the symbolic meaning of the set piece: the merry-go-round, but also adds a literal value to it, making its meaning and purpose be genuinely acknowledged in the universe of Ophüls’ picture, by Walbrook: its manager. After bringing Marie two months in to the future, making her a maid and leading her into her house of work, Walbrook again exclaims that he hopes it isn’t too late (for the love between Marie and the young man to take place) once again affirming his role as manager of the round, hoping the round of love is still in motion. Singing “Turn, turn, my characters” after having guided Marie to her next love affair, makes the seating of the merry-go-round set piece represent the ten characters, all turning and all being different just like the characters themselves.
After having told the uncle of the young man making love to Marie that the round must keep turning, the merry-go-round breaks in the next scene. Although having turned it manually for a while, after the young man starts flirting with the married woman: Emma, played by Danielle Darrieux, the carousel suddenly and unexpectedly breaks down. The film then cuts to reveal the man having been unable to ‘perform’ with the married woman. This cross-cutting joke further justifies the set piece of the round acting as a visual representation of love-making and its progressions. Appropriately, when the man gets back his passion to make love, the carousel gets fixed and continues to turn. Furthermore, as well as representing the circle of love, ‘La Ronde’ also symbolizes the picture’s recurrent references to thirst, time and memory (Thomas 1982: 76).
The only segment during which the carousel “does not spin at all” is the one with the husband and wife. Already at the beginning of this scene, Ophüls puts in a clever verbal hint towards the fact that this couple will not make love: the wife is reading Stendhal, the very same author the young man asked Emma if she ever read, when he was unable to perform. In this scene, set pieces are used expressively against the theme of making of love. First, Ophüls places the couple in separate beds. Although sleeping in separate beds was standard in that epoch, the distinct use of these set pieces separates the two from each other. If this is not convincing enough, Ophüls’ next shot separates the married couple not only by them lying in separate beds, but also by putting a swinging clock right in between the two, in the foreground of the image, distinctly separating the two from each other, expressing the idea that this couple will not make love and the highly ritualised and symmetrical structure that the set pieces create suggest that Emma and Charles’ (played by Fernand Gravey) marriage is a doomed one (Thomas 1982: 79).
Another use of expressive setting within La Ronde happens during the affair between the young lady, played by Odette Joyeux and the poet, played by Jean-Louis Barrault. The architecture of the poet’s apartment functions as a stage. The poet expresses his love for the young girl standing high up on a balcony above her, with her looking up at him as though watching a play. This setting portrays the theatricality of the poet’s desire for the young girl (Thomas 1982: 79). Looking even deeper into the placement of set pieces within this scene, one cannot help but notice that when the young lady lies to the poet telling him that she had dinner with her friend and her fiancée in a private dining suite and not that it was actually with a lover, she is framed inside a chandelier: which symbolically traps her by her lie within it. The same goes for when the poet is on his knees expressing his love for the girl, after they had made love. Candles are positioned sticking out of his head in the background as if the poet is worshipping the girl and as though he is in a church.
After La Ronde’s penultimate sexual encounter, a Count, played by Gérard Philipe, has a dream. During this dream in which the Count recalls where he was last night, a mix between the settings of Vienna 1900 and the studio Vienna of 1950 occurs. This dream sequence contains a shot in which the count is drunkenly slouching off the edge of what seems to be a self-moving horseless carriage which is driving along a ledge, behind which somewhat model buildings are seen. This illuminated ledge and its Vienna backdrop makes this shot seem like it is a play, thus impulsively shifting the audiences’ perception of setting to studio Vienna 1950, which is justified by the scene’s dream-like nature.
Ophüls’ picture ends with the Count leaves Léocadie: that same prostitute with whom the game started, and thus the round of love has gone full circle and ends, and so does the symbolic carousel that we see motionless as the Count walks past it at night. We then see Walbrook taking off his 1900 cloak and putting his 1950 one back on again. We then see the Count walking past the studio set, mixing his film-within-the-film being with the studio setting that ultimately created him.
Starting off with Ophüls’ 1950 academy award nominated French picture La Ronde, settings are used expressively within it in two separate ways. Firstly, through the picture’s production design and set pieces such as of the symbolic merry-go-round and secondly, through La Ronde’s narrative film-within-a-film setting of the narrator/meneur de jeu’s Vienna 1950 film studio and Vienna 1900: being the setting of the constructed ‘film’.
La Ronde is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play of the same name, and is about, in Susan M. White’s words: ten “dialogues” between men and women [in Vienna 1900, nine out of the ten] of which end in a sexual act (White 1995: 239). One of the lovers then moves along to a new partner, then one of those two moves along to another, and so on (ibid). As the film progresses, the social status of the characters escalates from very low to very high and then back to very low, and characters from almost every social milieu are presented within the story (ibid). To give one an idea of how this all works, Ophüls’ picture opens with a prostitute, played by Simone Signoret, wooing a soldier, played by Serge Reggiani, to have sex with her. He does, and then the film moves on to show the same soldier expressing his love for, and ultimately again, making love to his maid, played by Simone Simon. The film then shows the maid having relations with a bourgeois young man and so on and so on. What distinguishes and dominates Ophüls’ version of La Ronde, to the fourteen-years-later remake by Roger Vadim, is the fact that Vadim’s version concentrates mainly on simply presenting exactly what Schnitzler wrote onto the screen, whereas Ophüls’ version slightly departed from Schnitzler’s work and included depth, by having incorporated a second temporal setting to the film, being Vienna 1950.
Ophüls’ other personal addition to Schnitzler’s play was a master of ceremonies, a meneur de jeu, played by Anton Walbrook. Deborah Thomas describes the Walbrook character as an extra-narrative manipulator (Thomas 1982: 74) of the ‘created’ Vienna 1900 film, being precisely the film in which the ten couples sexuality interact with one another. The meneur de jeu in Ophüls’ La Ronde has three roles: an observer, a creator and an agent (ibid). In the film’s opening scene Walbrook explains to the audience: “And me. Who am I in this story?...The author? The announcer? A passer-by? I am you. In fact, anyone among you. I am the personification of your desire. Of your desire to know everything….But I see every aspect. Because I see in the round. And that allows me to be everywhere at the same time.” As an observer, Walbrook “parallels the spectators of La Ronde” simply observing the sexually charged characters in Vienna 1900 along with us: the audience. As a creator, the meneur de jeu controls what the audience sees from the Vienna 1900 film, as Walbrook is actually seen cutting the film-within-the-film in an editing studio, gaily singing: “La Censure!” Lastly, Thomas calling Walbrook an extra-narrative manipulator is the most appropriate way to describe his ‘agent’ role. As an agent, Walbrook has the power to manipulate the Vienna 1900 narrative, jumping into it and, for example, leading the maid character Marie through time, guiding her into her next sexual encounter with the bourgeois young man, played by Daniel Gélin. These expressive uses of settings within La Ronde, being headed as well as, to an extent, controlled by the meneur de jeu, distinguish the picture from the play, giving Ophüls’ film a playful three-dimension aspect to it.
This double temporal setting aspect of Ophüls’ La Ronde as well as the meneur de jeu’s ability to jump between and control the two settings, evokes one’s contemplation about the legitimacy of the film’s narrative as well as of the Walbrook character’s nature.
Considering the picture’s first scene: the film opens with Walbrook strolling along a film studio and then down the night streets of Vienna. Although Walbrook tells us, the audience, that he is in the year 1900, the film begins with the meneur de jeu strolling down the studio in his modern 1950 cloak (and then conveniently changing his cloak for one of 1900), we understand that the film had in fact started in Vienna 1950. We then meet our first character: Léocadie: the prostitute, who rides into the frame on a merry-go-round asking Walbrook if he “Wants to come?” Walbrook tells Léocadie that he is not coming with her because he is not in the game. Léocadie asks what game and the meneur de jeu appropriately explains to her that he “Manages the merry-go-round”. Walbrook tells the confused Léocadie that the game will commence with her and that she should go place herself on the street corner nearby. The puzzled Léocadie does what he says and that’s how the chain of sexual encounters begins: the picture’s round of love. Since the audience saw that Walbrook also exists in the 1950 studio world of Vienna, this scene with Signoret provokes a number of questions concerning the meaning of the film’s expressive use of setting. Which setting is actually real and is not controlled by anybody? The Vienna 1900 setting surely can not be real as we see Walbrook telling Léocadie what to do, ultimately guiding her to make her move, initiating the round of love himself. We also know that Walbrook takes Marie through time, leading her into the house of her next lover, predetermining and controlling her life. Even though Walbrook does not control all of the characters’ actions in Vienna 1900, their lives are still not real as we see Walbrook physically holding the celluloid in which they are bounded in, in the editing studio, making it clear that these characters are not real but simply, in the words of Thomas: “‘Dramatis personae whose world is a created one’ (Thomas 1982: 74). Furthering this subject of characters in a motion picture, what is Walbrook then? The meneur de jeu is presented as a god-like figure, appearing and even altering some of the characters’ lives, as well as being in control of the Vienna 1900 film, editing it and thus controlling what we, the audience, sees of it. Walbrook’s character parallel’s both the Schitzler’s characters in the film-within-the-film, as he appears as one himself, clearly shown in the film’s opening scene, but also parallel’s Ophüls’ himself, as he acts as the overseer and creator of the picture. However although Walbrook obviously has god-like qualities, being the one who started the ‘round’ itself and guiding characters’ lives, he himself “[…is…nonetheless firmly located within the larger narrative world of the Ophüls’ film overall” (ibid) which makes his world of Vienna 1950 be false as well.
Another significant moment within La Ronde, which makes audiences ponder about the validity of La Ronde’s universe, happens right after Marie’s travel through time with Walbrook. After guiding Marie up to her new quarters of work, Walbrook moves to the right of the frame in which the camera pans and follows him, revealing to the audience that the diegetic soundtrack we have been hearing is in fact non-diegetic and the musicians playing it are simply on the right hand side of the frame. Walbrook then picks up a clapperboard, on which the next scene is written: ‘The Maid and the Young Man’, and then claps it, initiating the next scene. These whimsical set-changes within La Ronde truly make one ponder about what’s real and what’s not within this film’s universe, having possibly inspired Bob Rafelson’s Head (1968), being a surrealist and comedic American picture containing similar whimsical set changes throughout.
Production design and set pieces play a fundamental role towards La Ronde’s meanings through setting. Starting off with the picture’s opening scene: Walbrook walks through the studio set of Vienna, up the false stone steps and starts giving a monologue to the audiences in front of a beautiful romantic candle-lit theatre stage, with a painted backdrop of the Vienna skyline. Immediately, because of this mise-en-scène, the meneur de jeu’s speech becomes theatrical, as if we are watching a play and not a film. This particular mise-en-scène is the first occurrence of La Ronde’s theme of reality vs. fiction, a theme prevalent throughout the picture. After giving his speech, Walbrook moves on with the camera panning with him to the left which reveals a studio light in the foreground as well as a backdrop of Vienna who’s authenticity is ambiguous. Next, in a surreal-like way, Walbrook, having revealed to the audiences that they are now in 1900, suitably changes cloaks from a random hanger standing in the studio for no ‘real’ reason apart from to fulfill La Ronde’s time-shifting universe, creating what Thomas calls a playful resultant disequilibrium (Thomas 1982: 74).
Walking down the created Vienna 1900, Walbrook comes to the most central set piece within Ophüls’ picture: ‘La Ronde’ itself. This vintage steam-pumped carousel containing seating from the traditional horse, to ladders, a lover’s bed and swings, represents a number of things. From Walbrook’s opening speech, one understands that this merry-go-round is already symbolic for the way the meneur the jeu sees things: in the round, being able to be in all places at once. From the word itself, ‘The Round’ can represent circling around, flirting around, doing the rounds, being promiscuous, a round of drinking or a round of waltz, all being activities attributed to the ten characters in the film-within-the-film. Walbrook explains to Léocadie that love is a game and that, although he himself is not in it, he manages the game, through the merry-go-round. The set piece of ‘La Ronde’ is then understood as a visual as well as symbolic representation of the game of love, which spins and spins and never stops. It is now appropriate to say the witty saying: “Love makes the world go round, but sex makes it spin”. After the first turn of the round, or in other words, the first sexual encounter in the picture between Léocadie and the soldier, Walbrook, standing dressed in a musicians outfit, sees the soldier running away from the prostitute and comments: “One minute longer and the merry-go-round would have stopped”. Walbrook’s comment not only justifies the symbolic meaning of the set piece: the merry-go-round, but also adds a literal value to it, making its meaning and purpose be genuinely acknowledged in the universe of Ophüls’ picture, by Walbrook: its manager. After bringing Marie two months in to the future, making her a maid and leading her into her house of work, Walbrook again exclaims that he hopes it isn’t too late (for the love between Marie and the young man to take place) once again affirming his role as manager of the round, hoping the round of love is still in motion. Singing “Turn, turn, my characters” after having guided Marie to her next love affair, makes the seating of the merry-go-round set piece represent the ten characters, all turning and all being different just like the characters themselves.
After having told the uncle of the young man making love to Marie that the round must keep turning, the merry-go-round breaks in the next scene. Although having turned it manually for a while, after the young man starts flirting with the married woman: Emma, played by Danielle Darrieux, the carousel suddenly and unexpectedly breaks down. The film then cuts to reveal the man having been unable to ‘perform’ with the married woman. This cross-cutting joke further justifies the set piece of the round acting as a visual representation of love-making and its progressions. Appropriately, when the man gets back his passion to make love, the carousel gets fixed and continues to turn. Furthermore, as well as representing the circle of love, ‘La Ronde’ also symbolizes the picture’s recurrent references to thirst, time and memory (Thomas 1982: 76).
The only segment during which the carousel “does not spin at all” is the one with the husband and wife. Already at the beginning of this scene, Ophüls puts in a clever verbal hint towards the fact that this couple will not make love: the wife is reading Stendhal, the very same author the young man asked Emma if she ever read, when he was unable to perform. In this scene, set pieces are used expressively against the theme of making of love. First, Ophüls places the couple in separate beds. Although sleeping in separate beds was standard in that epoch, the distinct use of these set pieces separates the two from each other. If this is not convincing enough, Ophüls’ next shot separates the married couple not only by them lying in separate beds, but also by putting a swinging clock right in between the two, in the foreground of the image, distinctly separating the two from each other, expressing the idea that this couple will not make love and the highly ritualised and symmetrical structure that the set pieces create suggest that Emma and Charles’ (played by Fernand Gravey) marriage is a doomed one (Thomas 1982: 79).
Another use of expressive setting within La Ronde happens during the affair between the young lady, played by Odette Joyeux and the poet, played by Jean-Louis Barrault. The architecture of the poet’s apartment functions as a stage. The poet expresses his love for the young girl standing high up on a balcony above her, with her looking up at him as though watching a play. This setting portrays the theatricality of the poet’s desire for the young girl (Thomas 1982: 79). Looking even deeper into the placement of set pieces within this scene, one cannot help but notice that when the young lady lies to the poet telling him that she had dinner with her friend and her fiancée in a private dining suite and not that it was actually with a lover, she is framed inside a chandelier: which symbolically traps her by her lie within it. The same goes for when the poet is on his knees expressing his love for the girl, after they had made love. Candles are positioned sticking out of his head in the background as if the poet is worshipping the girl and as though he is in a church.
After La Ronde’s penultimate sexual encounter, a Count, played by Gérard Philipe, has a dream. During this dream in which the Count recalls where he was last night, a mix between the settings of Vienna 1900 and the studio Vienna of 1950 occurs. This dream sequence contains a shot in which the count is drunkenly slouching off the edge of what seems to be a self-moving horseless carriage which is driving along a ledge, behind which somewhat model buildings are seen. This illuminated ledge and its Vienna backdrop makes this shot seem like it is a play, thus impulsively shifting the audiences’ perception of setting to studio Vienna 1950, which is justified by the scene’s dream-like nature.
Ophüls’ picture ends with the Count leaves Léocadie: that same prostitute with whom the game started, and thus the round of love has gone full circle and ends, and so does the symbolic carousel that we see motionless as the Count walks past it at night. We then see Walbrook taking off his 1900 cloak and putting his 1950 one back on again. We then see the Count walking past the studio set, mixing his film-within-the-film being with the studio setting that ultimately created him.
Perhaps Ophüls’ most highly regarded Hollywood picture is Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948), starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan, and based on the Stefan Zweig novella of the same name from 1922 (Bacher 1996: 132). Ophüls’ masterpiece tells the story of a playboy pianist Stefan Brand, played by Louis Jourdan, who receives a letter from an unknown woman hours before he is meant to take part in a duel, which he intends to flee. Upon reading the letter, Stefan learns about a woman: Lisa, played by Joan Fontaine, who had been in love with him from the moment the pianist moved into an apartment next to hers, many years ago. The film plays out as a flashback from the letter, being in Lisa’s point of view (in which she reveals her whole life and love for Stefan ever since she first saw him until, practically, her dying day) and the picture occasionally cuts back to Stefan reading her letter and ends with Stefan ultimately choosing to take part in the duel, knowing very well he will die.
Right from the first shot of the picture, the setting is revealed to the audience in a title that fills the frame: “Vienna, Around 1900”. Having chosen to set the film in 1900, and for the majority of it happening in the late 1800s due to the flashback-styled narrative, through this setting Ophüls is able to add specific details that enforce the film’s melodrama. It was Ophüls himself who incorporated the tragic duel ending of Letter From an Unknown Woman, an element that is missing from Zweig’s novella. Specifically because of this 1900 setting, Ophüls successfully provides his picture with a heartbreaking and powerful “doomed lovers” ending, giving Stefan a romantic death: by a duel, an element that would be absurd in a 1948 world.
Set pieces play a significant role in expressing Letter From an Unknown Woman’s meaning. Carla Marcantonio observes that ‘the landscape of turn-of-the-century Vienna is instead transformed into a stage of Lisa’s desire: doorways, stairs, streets and trains are cinematic vehicles’ (Marcantonio 2006). Marcantonio’s claim is in fact valid as Lisa’s first encounter with Stefan occurs when the little girl opens the house door for the pianist, opening it past the ninety degree angle, using the door as a shield against her desire. This little girl hiding behind this large transparent door, expressing her shyness towards Stefan, is not the only instance when set pieces are used in order to separate Lisa from her love. The still young Lisa constantly looks through windows to spy on Stefan, and listens to his beautiful piano playing through the wall of her apartment, as well as looks down at Stefan from the top of the stairs, who is bringing home women, and Lisa is visually restricted from him both by the railing of the staircase as well as by the distance the large stairway creates. These set pieces and the carefully constructed setting of the interior of the house, distances Lisa from her love Stefan, foreshadowing the sorrowful reality to their short-lived love story. Observing the interior setting of the house further, both Lisa’s and Stefan’s apartments are on the top of the long winding staircase. In order to have emphasized the idea that their love would never work, a more obvious choice would have been to have placed the two’s apartments on separate floors, separating Lisa and Stefan by the lengthy stairs. However by placing Lisa’s and Stefan’s apartments right next to each other on the top of the stairs, this set design expresses how the perfect woman for Stefan, being Lisa, which he so longed for throughout his life, was literally right next door to him, but he never realised it, just like what happens in the outcome of the picture. Furthermore, positioning the two apartments next to each other also emphasizes how close Lisa’s and Stefan’s love could have been, which the audience later observes through the lovers’ two brief encounters, but alas, their love never realized itself and ended up doomed. Observing Letter From An Unknown Woman’s set pieces even further, when Stefan plays the piano for Lisa on their first night together, Lisa crouches next to the edge of the piano, which makes her very small. Just like crouching and hiding behind doorways and windows when she was a child, Lisa does the same again at a much older age, which represents that she’s still helplessly in love with Stefan, just like a child: a clever manipulation of set pieces by Ophüls.
Apart from cleverly using set pieces in order to create meaning within Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls successfully does the same through settings themselves. Just like Marcantonio points out, the setting of trains are also cinematic vehicles within Ophüls’ picture. Firstly, the fun fair voyage cabin. The snug magical cabin not only emphasizes Lisa’s and Stefan’s intimacy and romance (a closure and warmth that was expressed moments earlier in their dining suite at a restaurant) but the setting also draws a morbid parallel to the film’s upcoming tragedies that also happen involving a train cabin: the death of Lisa and Stefan’s son, which Lisa sees off in a cabin of a train in which Stefan Jr. contracts typhus and dies, and the cabin that Stefan steps in, which literally takes him away from his short-lived relationship with Lisa.
The setting of Lisa’s new job in Vienna, being that of a dress model for customers, provokes a reflective meaning to the picture as well. Lisa works at Madame Spitz’s but her métier of modelling dresses is not as random as it seems. The young woman poses and exhibits herself to men and woman everyday. However for the male customers, her dresses are not the sole thing that they are interested in. There is a moment in Letter From An Unknown Woman during which one customer whispers to Madame Spitz inquiring whether Lisa is single, thus Ophüls makes it clear to us that there are men who try and court Lisa. However, Lisa isn’t interested in any of these men as her only love is Stefan. Lisa’s particular job gives her the dream-like hope that soon, one day, Stefan will be one of these men.
One of Ophüls’ most significant changes to the picture from Stefan Zweig’s novella, was changing the town of Innsbruck to Linz. Lisa’s mother, played by Mady Christians, marries a rich suitor and the family moves to Linz. If the picture had followed the novel, the idea of moving to another town, being Innsbruck in the novel’s case, would be a devastation to the young heroine as that would meet moving away from Stefan. However, Ophüls’ significant change of setting to Linz creates an impactful meaning towards audiences, specifically of 1948. As V.F. Perkins points out: ‘The most immediate associations of Linz would have been with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazism’ (Perkins 2000a: 73). Linz was Hitler’s hometown, thus Lisa’s torture of moving to another town is specifically augmented by this particular town being one ‘marked’ by the Führer himself, a torture, according to Karen Hollinger, the Jewish Ophüls himself evaded (Hollinger 1986: 18). Now, Linz is not only in contempt by the picture’s audiences because it drew Lisa away from Stefan, but also because it is where only a couple of years ago, for 1948’s audiences, Hitler grew up in and later hoped for the town’s vindication into the sphere of culture and to prevail over Vienna (Perkins 2000a: 74). Moreover, it was Ophüls’ own decision to include the military into this story, making a 1948 audience member probably not being able to help but to see Lisa’s suitor, a young military lieutenant Hans, played by Marcel Journet, as a young Hitler himself, further making audiences favour Stefan instead.
“All the time I’ve been away I thought of [Vienna] longingly as your city. Now it was our city”, Lisa’s voiceover reads to Stefan. The setting of Vienna is not only the preferred city to Lisa because that is where Stefan is, but is also perceived as the ‘right’ city to be in, as Linz is not only associated with going against Lisa’s ‘romantic destiny’ (Perkins 2000a: 73), but also with Hitler. Furthermore, the contrast between Lisa’s desires and dreads, is also cleverly expressed through composers associated with both the settings of Austria and of the 1800s. It was Ophüls who changed Stefan’s profession from Zweig’s journalist into that of a musician, thus it is with the young Mozart that Stefan is so vividly compared, a composer from Saltzburg, Austria, whose music is generally light and romantic. Whereas what Lisa does not want, being living in Linz, is also expressed through her shoving a book on Wagner, being Hitler’s favourite composer, back onto its shelf with brute force, and taking Mozart, or ‘Stefan’ out instead. Furthermore, it is Mozart’s opera of The Magic Flute that reunites the two lovers again.
Coming back to William Paul and to his praise of sociological density through the manipulation of settings within Max Ophüls The Reckless Moment, the German director, apart from expressing profound meanings through his expressive use of settings in La Ronde and Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls also creates sociological density in his two pictures, just like in The Reckless Moment. In La Ronde, sociological density is wittingly expressed through the copulative mixture of every social class of Vienna 1900, as well as through the mixture of Vienna 1900 with a God-like meneur de jeu. In Letter from an Unknown Woman, the lower class Lisa as well as her mother both marry upper class men, permanently elevating themselves up to the highest social class. The picture also highlights the narratively less important, but sociologically gold characters of the lower class: such as the elderly couple working out in the cold, serving the bourgeois Lisa and Stefan the joys of the fun fair fake train, as well as the flower seller seen selling flowers to the two characters throughout the picture. However, sociological density is not the main artistic achievement of both these pictures, but their successful expressive use of settings towards highlighting these pictures’ meanings is what makes them stand out. La Ronde uses its double temporal setting of Vienna 1900 and Vienna 1950 in order to create a playful comedic yet thought-provoking film-within-a-film disequilibrium, as well as production design and set pieces in order to emphasize and symbolize the film’s themes and connotations. Letter from an Unknown Woman uses settings expressively through both its temporal and locational settings of 1800s and Linz, thanks to which certain narrative additions and intricacies are incorporated, as well as through set pieces which provide both foreshadowing and symbolism to Max Ophüls’ Hollywood masterpiece.
Right from the first shot of the picture, the setting is revealed to the audience in a title that fills the frame: “Vienna, Around 1900”. Having chosen to set the film in 1900, and for the majority of it happening in the late 1800s due to the flashback-styled narrative, through this setting Ophüls is able to add specific details that enforce the film’s melodrama. It was Ophüls himself who incorporated the tragic duel ending of Letter From an Unknown Woman, an element that is missing from Zweig’s novella. Specifically because of this 1900 setting, Ophüls successfully provides his picture with a heartbreaking and powerful “doomed lovers” ending, giving Stefan a romantic death: by a duel, an element that would be absurd in a 1948 world.
Set pieces play a significant role in expressing Letter From an Unknown Woman’s meaning. Carla Marcantonio observes that ‘the landscape of turn-of-the-century Vienna is instead transformed into a stage of Lisa’s desire: doorways, stairs, streets and trains are cinematic vehicles’ (Marcantonio 2006). Marcantonio’s claim is in fact valid as Lisa’s first encounter with Stefan occurs when the little girl opens the house door for the pianist, opening it past the ninety degree angle, using the door as a shield against her desire. This little girl hiding behind this large transparent door, expressing her shyness towards Stefan, is not the only instance when set pieces are used in order to separate Lisa from her love. The still young Lisa constantly looks through windows to spy on Stefan, and listens to his beautiful piano playing through the wall of her apartment, as well as looks down at Stefan from the top of the stairs, who is bringing home women, and Lisa is visually restricted from him both by the railing of the staircase as well as by the distance the large stairway creates. These set pieces and the carefully constructed setting of the interior of the house, distances Lisa from her love Stefan, foreshadowing the sorrowful reality to their short-lived love story. Observing the interior setting of the house further, both Lisa’s and Stefan’s apartments are on the top of the long winding staircase. In order to have emphasized the idea that their love would never work, a more obvious choice would have been to have placed the two’s apartments on separate floors, separating Lisa and Stefan by the lengthy stairs. However by placing Lisa’s and Stefan’s apartments right next to each other on the top of the stairs, this set design expresses how the perfect woman for Stefan, being Lisa, which he so longed for throughout his life, was literally right next door to him, but he never realised it, just like what happens in the outcome of the picture. Furthermore, positioning the two apartments next to each other also emphasizes how close Lisa’s and Stefan’s love could have been, which the audience later observes through the lovers’ two brief encounters, but alas, their love never realized itself and ended up doomed. Observing Letter From An Unknown Woman’s set pieces even further, when Stefan plays the piano for Lisa on their first night together, Lisa crouches next to the edge of the piano, which makes her very small. Just like crouching and hiding behind doorways and windows when she was a child, Lisa does the same again at a much older age, which represents that she’s still helplessly in love with Stefan, just like a child: a clever manipulation of set pieces by Ophüls.
Apart from cleverly using set pieces in order to create meaning within Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls successfully does the same through settings themselves. Just like Marcantonio points out, the setting of trains are also cinematic vehicles within Ophüls’ picture. Firstly, the fun fair voyage cabin. The snug magical cabin not only emphasizes Lisa’s and Stefan’s intimacy and romance (a closure and warmth that was expressed moments earlier in their dining suite at a restaurant) but the setting also draws a morbid parallel to the film’s upcoming tragedies that also happen involving a train cabin: the death of Lisa and Stefan’s son, which Lisa sees off in a cabin of a train in which Stefan Jr. contracts typhus and dies, and the cabin that Stefan steps in, which literally takes him away from his short-lived relationship with Lisa.
The setting of Lisa’s new job in Vienna, being that of a dress model for customers, provokes a reflective meaning to the picture as well. Lisa works at Madame Spitz’s but her métier of modelling dresses is not as random as it seems. The young woman poses and exhibits herself to men and woman everyday. However for the male customers, her dresses are not the sole thing that they are interested in. There is a moment in Letter From An Unknown Woman during which one customer whispers to Madame Spitz inquiring whether Lisa is single, thus Ophüls makes it clear to us that there are men who try and court Lisa. However, Lisa isn’t interested in any of these men as her only love is Stefan. Lisa’s particular job gives her the dream-like hope that soon, one day, Stefan will be one of these men.
One of Ophüls’ most significant changes to the picture from Stefan Zweig’s novella, was changing the town of Innsbruck to Linz. Lisa’s mother, played by Mady Christians, marries a rich suitor and the family moves to Linz. If the picture had followed the novel, the idea of moving to another town, being Innsbruck in the novel’s case, would be a devastation to the young heroine as that would meet moving away from Stefan. However, Ophüls’ significant change of setting to Linz creates an impactful meaning towards audiences, specifically of 1948. As V.F. Perkins points out: ‘The most immediate associations of Linz would have been with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazism’ (Perkins 2000a: 73). Linz was Hitler’s hometown, thus Lisa’s torture of moving to another town is specifically augmented by this particular town being one ‘marked’ by the Führer himself, a torture, according to Karen Hollinger, the Jewish Ophüls himself evaded (Hollinger 1986: 18). Now, Linz is not only in contempt by the picture’s audiences because it drew Lisa away from Stefan, but also because it is where only a couple of years ago, for 1948’s audiences, Hitler grew up in and later hoped for the town’s vindication into the sphere of culture and to prevail over Vienna (Perkins 2000a: 74). Moreover, it was Ophüls’ own decision to include the military into this story, making a 1948 audience member probably not being able to help but to see Lisa’s suitor, a young military lieutenant Hans, played by Marcel Journet, as a young Hitler himself, further making audiences favour Stefan instead.
“All the time I’ve been away I thought of [Vienna] longingly as your city. Now it was our city”, Lisa’s voiceover reads to Stefan. The setting of Vienna is not only the preferred city to Lisa because that is where Stefan is, but is also perceived as the ‘right’ city to be in, as Linz is not only associated with going against Lisa’s ‘romantic destiny’ (Perkins 2000a: 73), but also with Hitler. Furthermore, the contrast between Lisa’s desires and dreads, is also cleverly expressed through composers associated with both the settings of Austria and of the 1800s. It was Ophüls who changed Stefan’s profession from Zweig’s journalist into that of a musician, thus it is with the young Mozart that Stefan is so vividly compared, a composer from Saltzburg, Austria, whose music is generally light and romantic. Whereas what Lisa does not want, being living in Linz, is also expressed through her shoving a book on Wagner, being Hitler’s favourite composer, back onto its shelf with brute force, and taking Mozart, or ‘Stefan’ out instead. Furthermore, it is Mozart’s opera of The Magic Flute that reunites the two lovers again.
Coming back to William Paul and to his praise of sociological density through the manipulation of settings within Max Ophüls The Reckless Moment, the German director, apart from expressing profound meanings through his expressive use of settings in La Ronde and Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls also creates sociological density in his two pictures, just like in The Reckless Moment. In La Ronde, sociological density is wittingly expressed through the copulative mixture of every social class of Vienna 1900, as well as through the mixture of Vienna 1900 with a God-like meneur de jeu. In Letter from an Unknown Woman, the lower class Lisa as well as her mother both marry upper class men, permanently elevating themselves up to the highest social class. The picture also highlights the narratively less important, but sociologically gold characters of the lower class: such as the elderly couple working out in the cold, serving the bourgeois Lisa and Stefan the joys of the fun fair fake train, as well as the flower seller seen selling flowers to the two characters throughout the picture. However, sociological density is not the main artistic achievement of both these pictures, but their successful expressive use of settings towards highlighting these pictures’ meanings is what makes them stand out. La Ronde uses its double temporal setting of Vienna 1900 and Vienna 1950 in order to create a playful comedic yet thought-provoking film-within-a-film disequilibrium, as well as production design and set pieces in order to emphasize and symbolize the film’s themes and connotations. Letter from an Unknown Woman uses settings expressively through both its temporal and locational settings of 1800s and Linz, thanks to which certain narrative additions and intricacies are incorporated, as well as through set pieces which provide both foreshadowing and symbolism to Max Ophüls’ Hollywood masterpiece.
Bibliography
Bacher, L. (1996). Max Ophüls in the Hollywood studios. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University.
Hollinger, Karen (1986) ‘Max Ophüls A Biographical Sketch’ in Wexman, Virginia Wright and Hollinger Karen (eds) Letter from an Unknown Woman. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 18.
Marcantonio, Carla (2006) ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ Senses of Cinema, May. Available HTTP: http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/cteq/letter_unknown_woman (20 April 2018).
Paul, William (2004) ‘Off the Deep End, Far From Heaven: Social Topography in The Reckless Moment’ Arizona Quarterly 60/5, 44.
Perkins, V.F. (2000a) ‘Ophüls Contra Wagner and Others’, Movie 36, 73-79.
Thomas, Deborah (1982) ‘La Ronde’ Movie 29/30, 74-79.
White, S. (1995). The Cinema of Max Ophüls. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hollinger, Karen (1986) ‘Max Ophüls A Biographical Sketch’ in Wexman, Virginia Wright and Hollinger Karen (eds) Letter from an Unknown Woman. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 18.
Marcantonio, Carla (2006) ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ Senses of Cinema, May. Available HTTP: http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/cteq/letter_unknown_woman (20 April 2018).
Paul, William (2004) ‘Off the Deep End, Far From Heaven: Social Topography in The Reckless Moment’ Arizona Quarterly 60/5, 44.
Perkins, V.F. (2000a) ‘Ophüls Contra Wagner and Others’, Movie 36, 73-79.
Thomas, Deborah (1982) ‘La Ronde’ Movie 29/30, 74-79.
White, S. (1995). The Cinema of Max Ophüls. New York: Columbia University Press.
Filmography
Head (1968) Directed by Bob Rafelson [Film]. Raybert Productions.
La Ronde (1950) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Films Sacha Gordine.
La Ronde (1964) Directed by Roger Vadim [Film]. Interopa Film.
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Rampart Productions.
The Reckless Moment (1947) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Columbia Pictures Corporation.
La Ronde (1950) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Films Sacha Gordine.
La Ronde (1964) Directed by Roger Vadim [Film]. Interopa Film.
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Rampart Productions.
The Reckless Moment (1947) Directed by Max Ophüls [Film]. Columbia Pictures Corporation.