The array is enormous in terms of attractions and show values, the spectacular and the scandalous: the truth, the full truth about the life of Lola Montez, her stage successes, her countless lovers. “Ranged hearts, squandered fortunes, the sarabande of love.” The whole thing presented in a lavish circus show in which she presented herself at the end of her career. The apotheosis of this career came when Lola came to Munich, where she began a love affair with King Ludwig I.
With the gallop of the film Lola Montez the radio retrospective begins Love. The living. Just. A long night with films by Max Ophüls, three hours, designed by Martina Müller, who has been intimately familiar with his work for years. Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Noethen will speak. She brings Lola Montez to life and life and Max Ophüls and his films. And in the medium of radio, the transitions between all these are particularly beautiful and fluid, if only because Ophül’s films show that cinema is more than images, that everything interacts here, the color of the images and the speech and the sounds.
It is moving when Ophüls himself can be heard, about his love for women, his sadness about the stupidity of the producers
Lola Montez was – in color and cinemascope – the biggest production of European cinema in 1955, the most expensive, with the biggest stars. Martine Carol played Lola, who was the biggest star of French cinema before Brigitte Bardot. This aroused the greatest expectations of the donors. And then it was a huge scandal – and a terrible financial debacle.
Ophüls’ life was pure restlessness, he started with stage and radio work, in the thirties there were first cinema successes (flirtation, after Schnitzler), then fleeing the Nazis to France, and finally on to Hollywood, where he was able to make four films. After the war he returned to Europe but could only make films in France (The danceagain after Schnitzler), Lola Montez was his last film, he died in 1957. The public and the press were furious with Lola, only Ophüls’ colleagues jumped to his side, Jean Cocteau, Roberto Rossellini, Jacques Becker, and, at that time still a critic, François Truffaut: the true cinema of the avant-garde!
It is moving when Ophüls himself can be heard, about his love for women, his sadness about the stupidity of the producers. The wonderful story of how, as a boy, he read the inscription on the Frankfurt Opera “Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten” and in the evening reported to his grandfather, a merchant: “Den beautiful good goods…”
Those who know the films naturally have their favorite passages in their heads – Adolf Wohlbrück in the round dance, when he lets the title waltz sound. Peter Ustinov as Lola’s ringmaster, gently guiding her through spectacle and exhaustion. Perhaps some listeners will be lured to the films by the show’s drive. Lola Montez and flirtation are available on DVD in the Edition Filmmuseum. Ophüls’ films, Martina Müller sums it up, “a sequence of irritations and disturbances within an order that does not collapse. What remains are the dead and ghosts.”
Love. The living. Just. A long night with films by Max OphülsDLF Kultur, night to Saturday, 12:05 a.m. and DLF, Saturday, 11:05 p.m.