Max Ophüls

"Max Oppenheimer" redirects here. For the Austrian artist, see Max Oppenheimer (artist).

For Salman Rushdie character, see Shalimar the Clown.

Max Ophüls
Born	Maximillian Oppenheimer (1902-05-06)6 May 1902 Saarbrücken, German Empire
Died	26 March 1957(1957-03-26) (aged 54) Hamburg, West Germany
Resting place	Père Lachaise Cemetery
Other names	Max Opuls Ophuls
Citizenship	Germany France (from 1938)
Occupation(s)	Director, Writer
Years active	1931–1957
Spouse	Hildegard Wall (m. 1926)
Children	Marcel Ophuls

Maximillian Oppenheimer (/ˈɒpənhaɪmər/ OP-ən-hy-mər, German: [maksiˈmiːli̯aːn ˈʔɔpn̩ˌhaɪmɐ]; 6 May 1902 – 26 March 1957), known as Max Ophüls (UK: /ˈɔːfəls/ AW-fəlss, US: /ˈoʊfəls/ OH-fəlss, German: [maks ˈʔɔfʏls]) or simply Ophuls, was a German and French film director and screenwriter. He was known for his opulent and lyrical visual style, with heavy use of tracking shots, and his melancholic, romantic themes. The Harvard Film Archive referred to Ophüls as "a supreme stylist of the cinema and a master storyteller."

A refugee from Nazi Germany, Ophüls worked in Germany (1931–1933), France (1933–1940 and 1950–1957), and the United States (1947–1950). He made nearly 30 films, the latter ones being especially notable: The Reckless Moment (1949), Letter from an Unknown Woman (also 1949) La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), The Earrings of Madame de… (1953) and Lola Montès (1955).

Life

Youth and early career

Max Ophüls was born in Saarbrücken, Germany, the son of Leopold Oppenheimer, a Jewish textile manufacturer and owner of several textile shops in Germany, and his wife Helene Oppenheimer (née Bamberger). He took the pseudonym Ophüls during the early part of his theatrical career so that, should he fail, it would not embarrass his father.

Initially envisioning an acting career, he started as a stage actor in 1919 and played at the Aachen Theatre from 1921 to 1923. He then worked as a theater director, becoming the first director at the city theater of Dortmund. Ophüls moved into theatre production in 1924. He became creative director of the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1926. Having had 200 plays to his credit, he turned to film production in 1929, when he became a dialogue director under Anatole Litvak at UFA in Berlin. He worked throughout Germany and directed his first film in 1931, the comedy short Dann schon lieber Lebertran (literally In This Case, Rather Cod-Liver Oil).

Of his early films, the most acclaimed is Liebelei (1933), which included a number of the characteristic elements for which he was to become known: luxurious sets, a feminist attitude, and a duel between a younger and an older man.

It was at the Burgtheater that Ophüls met the actress Hilde Wall. They were married in 1926.

Exile and post-war career

Predicting 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, where he had directed Everybody's Woman (1934). In July 1941, before leaving for the United States, he stayed in Portugal, in Estoril, at Casa Mar e Sol. Once in Hollywood, championed by director Preston Sturges, a longtime fan, he directed a number of distinguished films.

His first Hollywood film was the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. vehicle, The Exile (1947). Ophüls' Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), derived from a Stefan Zweig novella, is the most highly regarded of the American films. Caught (1949), and The Reckless Moment (1949) followed, before his return to Europe in 1950.

Back in France, he directed and collaborated on the adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde (1950), which won the 1951 BAFTA Award for Best Film, and Lola Montès (1955) starring Martine Carol and Peter Ustinov, as well as Le Plaisir and The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), the latter with Danielle Darrieux and Charles Boyer, which capped his career. Ophüls died from rheumatic heart disease on 26 March 1957 in Hamburg, while shooting interiors on The Lovers of Montparnasse, and was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. This final film was completed by his friend Jacques Becker.

Ophüls's son Marcel Ophüls became a documentary-film maker, director of The Sorrow and the Pity and other films examining the nature of political power.

The annual Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis in Saarbrücken is named after him.

Style

All his works feature his distinctive smooth camera movements, complex crane and dolly sweeps, and tracking shots.

Many of his films inspired filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson, who gave an introduction on the restored DVD of The Earrings of Madame de... (1953).

Some of his films are narrated from the point of view of the female protagonist. Film scholars have analyzed films such as Liebelei (1933), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), and Madame de... (1953) as examples of the woman's film genre. Nearly all of his female protagonists had names beginning with "L" (Leonora, Lisa, Lucia, Louise, Lola, etc.)

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 dear 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.

Filmography

Year	Title	English title	Country	Notes
1931	Dann schon lieber Lebertran	I'd Rather Have Cod Liver Oil	Germany	Short film
	Die verliebte Firma	The Company's in Love	Germany
1932	Die verkaufte Braut	The Bartered Bride	Germany
1933	Liebelei		Germany	French version Une histoire d'amour released the same year
	Lachende Erben	Laughing Heirs	Germany
	On a volé un homme	A Man Has Been Stolen	France	Lost film
1934	La signora di tutti	Everybody's Woman	Italy
1935	Divine		France
1936	Komedie om geld	The Trouble With Money	Netherlands
	Ave Maria		France	Documentary short film
	La Tendre Ennemie	The Tender Enemy	France
	Valse brillante de Chopin		France	Documentary short film
1937	Yoshiwara		France
1938	Le Roman de Werther	The Novel of Werther	France
1939	Sans lendemain	There's No Tomorrow	France
1940	L'École des femmes		France
	De Mayerling à Sarajevo	From Mayerling to Sarajevo	France
1946	Vendetta	Vendetta	United States	Fired during filming
1947	The Exile	The Exile	United States
1948	Letter from an Unknown Woman	Letter from an Unknown Woman	United States
1949	Caught	Caught	United States
	The Reckless Moment	The Reckless Moment	United States
1950	La Ronde	Roundabout	France
1952	Le Plaisir		France	Nominated for an Academy Award
1953	Madame de...	The Earrings of Madame de...	France
1955	Lola Montès		France, West Germany	Eastmancolor film

• Also worked on Les amants de Montparnasse (1958).

Bibliography

• 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).

See also

• List of German-speaking Academy Award winners and nominees

References

Sources

• Seibel, Alexandra (2009). Vienna, Girls, and Jewish Authorship: Topographies of a Cinematic City, 1920–40. New York, US: New York University. ISBN 978-1-109-90234-1.
• Bock, Hans-Michael; Bergfelder, Tim (2009). The concise Cinegraph: Encyclopaedia of German cinema. New York, US: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-57181-655-9.
• Hollinger, Karen (1986). Letter from an unknown woman. Piscataway, New Jersey, US: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1160-3.

Further reading

• 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 0-405-12924-6
• Susan M. White (1995), The Cinema of Max Ophüls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman, New York: Columbia University Press. | ISBN 0-231-10113-9
• Lutz Bacher (1996), Max Ophüls in the Hollywood Studios, Rutgers, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. | ISBN 0-8135-2291-9
• Melinda Camber Porter (1993), "Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture", Da Capo Press. | ISBN 978-0-306-80540-0

External links

• Dossier about Max Ophüls (edited by Toni D'Angela), on La furia umana, n° 9, 2011, texts (English, French, Italian) by Raymond Bellour, Chris Fujiwara, Leland Monk, Gaylyn Studlar, Susan M. White, Alain Masson, and others. [1]
• Max Ophüls at IMDb
• Max Ophuls Bibliography (via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center)
• Senses of Cinema Essay by Tag Gallagher
• Max Ophüls Award