La Ronde (1950), a film by Max Ophuls

 

 For the Criterion Blogathon

With the release of one of 2014's most unique films, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, came an avalanche of publicity. The influences on Anderson's much acclaimed and awarded bittersweet romp through a fictional between-the-wars Old Europe were widely scrutinized in the mainstream press for a time. Among them were German writer Stefan Zweig, whose autobiography The World of Yesterday was a core inspiration; German-born filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch, who made a string of enchanting films of great charm and sophistication through the '30s and '40s; and Max Ophuls, another German-born filmmaker, whose elegant works were marked by deep wit, a cosmopolitan world view and an affinity for Old Europe which he depicted on screen with great style and tendresse many times. His Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) is arguably the greatest film adaptation of Stefan Zweig's work and, more directly linking Ophuls to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the name of Tilda Swinton's character, "Madame D," is a nod to his masterpiece, The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), the film Wes Anderson named first on his "top ten" list of Criterion Collection titles.

Max Ophuls' Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)

It is turn-of-the-century Vienna, the wee hours of a wet night. A man alights from a horse-drawn carriage and jokes with companions about the duel at dawn to which he has been challenged. Entering his flat alone he tells his manservant he will leave before morning, "Honor is a luxury only gentlemen can afford." But the mute servant indicates a letter awaiting him and, as he prepares for his departure, the man opens it and begins to read...

"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," it says, and the voice of a woman, the letter writer, begins to narrate her story.  Her tale unfolds in flashback as the man immerses himself in the letter.