Lola Montès (1955): Is It Really "the Greatest Film of All Time?"

by Tony Dayoub

Before I discuss Lola Montès, allow me to digress. An oft-discussed topic among cinephiliacs (where did I see it this week, Wonders in the Dark?) is the difference—if there is one—between a film labeled "best" or "favorite." As in, "Citizen Kane is the best film of all time," or, "My all-time favorite film is There Will Be Blood." I am of the opinion that "best" and "favorite" are two different animals. A movie which I label "best" is a film displaying artistic, intellectual, and technical virtuosity, yet it might not engage me on an emotional level. The White Ribbon (2009) is a great example of a film which I am happy to list as one of the best of this decade, but it leaves me cold... as it is meant to. It certainly isn't a "favorite" which I would choose to see over and over again. No, a "favorite" is a movie which I enjoy watching, sometimes even obsessively, despite any flaws in its execution. For example, David Lynch's visually stylish Lost Highway (1997) is a film which is certainly not one of his best, tends to be almost parodic in its excesses, yet appeals to me for the way it hearken's back to another noir I love, Kiss Me Deadly. Get it?

Well, as it so happens, the two films which are constantly vying for the number one spot on my own personal list of such things happen to be films I consider both "best" and "favorite," Bertolucci's Il Conformista (The Conformist) (1970) and Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974). They each have a complex nonlinear narrative structure, make thematic associations through montage—a visual device unique to the moving picture—are impeccably cast, perfectly written with dialogue that is not only colloquial to the characters but resonant within the subtextual framework... the list of their outstanding qualities goes on. They are also movies which I engage with so greatly that even after multiple viewings, I like spending time in their respective worlds. Food for the mind AND for the soul, these movies are.

Watching the upcoming Criterion release of Max Ophuls final film, Lola Montès, at first glance a film which doesn't resemble either of my two favorites, is what got me to thinking about how I classify movies. A subscriber to auteurism like myself couldn't ignore its godfather, film critic Andrew Sarris and his one-time declaration, "Lola Montès is, in my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time.” Wow. He really sidestepped the whole "best" vs. "favorite" argument by using the all-encompassing "greatest." Why hadn't I seen this movie yet? The reasons are many as to how this gorgeous film got lost over the years, and easy to find if you search the internet. But as for me personally, fate got in the way of my being able to see it in 2008, the first year I was invited to cover the New York Film Festival where this restored version had its premiere.

Lola Montès explores the historical figure—an Englishwoman (Martine Carol) who adopted the titular stage name gaining some fame for her dancing and even greater fame for her numerous affairs with such luminaries as composer Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and King Ludwig I of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook, looking like an old world Victor Garber)—through an unusual framing device. Peter Ustinov assays the role of the Ringmaster at a travelling circus in which Lola performs in a living reenactment of her life story. Each time an anecdote is related to the rapt audience, the viewer is drawn into a flashback by the film's own meta-ringmaster, Ophuls.

On a purely visual level the film, Ophuls' first in color and Cinemascope, is spectacular to behold. Every frame is lushly appointed with color, and a gilded luxury densely and kaleidoscopically layered onto the image. Not one shot is free of any refractive, prismatic, or reflective effect. Actors are frequently blocked by columns, architectural grating, stained glass, or gauzy color curtains throughout, all effects which separate us from the events of Lola's life unfolding before us while paradoxically creating the intimacy of being in the same room as her, voyeuristically peering into her most private moments like some celebrity stalker. Adding to this peculiar contradiction is Ophuls' refusal to ever shoot any closeups within the flashbacks, a decision which realistically approximates our own natural vision's propensity to focus on medium to wide tableaux, again keeping us at an unusual distance cinematically while still preserving the you-are-there perception.

The viewer's perspective shifts almost imperceptibly throughout the circus setting, the film's present as it were, from one of spectator when Ophuls' constantly moving camera tracks Lola from her audience's point of view to one of omniscient voyeur when the camera follows her backstage, where every cinematographic obstruction hints at the loneliness and confinement the character endures in her self-imposed isolation. Say what you will about Martine Carol's limited range, it is perfectly harnessed by Ophuls to convey the character of a chameleon, one who has voided her personality to become all things to all men, a sexual object defined by whatever male is at her side, but strangely devoid of emotion in all but two key moments in the film. Carol's vacant expression and Ophuls' visual imprisonment of Lola fuse in the film's last tracking shot to form one of the most disturbing final shots I can remember from a movie of that period, over which he brings down a theatrical curtain, the final implicit statement that the viewer is tied to Lola's objectification as greatly as her filmic male admirers are.

All of this analysis should betray the fact that though Lola Montès stimulated me on an intellectual level, on an emotional level it failed to connect, although I'm not sure that wasn't Ophuls' intention. With all due respect to Mr. Sarris, Lola Montès has made it onto my all-time top 10. However, it has not yet supplanted either The Conformist or The Godfather Part II as a favorite. True, Lola Montès ends up having more in common with each of the aforementioned films than one would think. Each of the film's respective protagonists end up in a form of self-imposed exile. Each of the films share a novelistic, non-linear approach to storytelling. Each of the films are sprawling in their use of the external (worldwide physical locations) to focus narrowly on the internal (the motives of one individual).

But Lola Montès' technical virtuosity far surpasses that of the other two films. Where The Conformist and The Godfather Part II are dependent on montage to develop their theses, Lola Montès trusts its audience to make its way through its mise en scéne to get its subtext across. So I'm not entirely certain that with subsequent viewings I won't become more comfortable with its spectacle on a visceral level. Its unpredictable ending makes one want to rethink the whole movie. Given time, Lola Montès might just inch her way up to the very top of my own list of favorites.

Lola Montès is available on Criterion Blu-ray and DVD, Tuesday, February 16th.