Lola Montès [Blu-Ray]

Lola Montès, personnage ayant existait, danseuse, actrice, courtisane qui arrivera à être la maitresse d'un roi de Bavières, puis finira comme bête de cirque., littéralement au premier degré (le dernier plan la voie en cage et les hommes qui défilent pour lui baisser la main - pendant un long traveling arrière, dernière image du film -). Le film présente son numéro de bête de cirque, qui raconte sa vie. Elle ne passe pas à travers un cerceau en feu, mais c'est tout comme. Le spectacle du cirque est ponctué régulièrement par des retours en arrière sur la vie de Lola Montès. Comment elle a épousé l'amant de sa mère, sa rupture avec Franz Liszt, ou sa rencontre avec le roi de Bavière.
Le film est en Cinemascope, mais Max Ophuls met d'hideux masques pour rétrécir l'image, souvent pénibles. Nous imaginons qu'il n'aimait ou ne comprenez pas le format. Ces caches sont souvent pathétiques. Peuvent-ils être considérés comme de la mise en scène ou comme de la paresse?
Malgré le format large, le CinémaScope, les costumes, la richesse de l'image et des mouvements de caméra, avec beaucoup de travellings, ou malgré la qualité générale de fabrication du film, son intérêt est dans quelques scènes le dialogue entre Martine Carol alias Lola Montès et à chaque fois un personnage masculin puisque elle passe sa vie à courtiser ou être courtisée et à vivre des histoires d'amour éphémères avec des hommes: ce sont les scènes intimistes les plus intéressantes.
Malgré l'énormité de la production. Martine Carol dans ces scènes intimes fait passer l’émotion, elle ne semble pas savoir ce qu'elle veut, et s'en trouve touchante.

ne passe pas sur un lecteur blue ray dézoné mais passe sur u zone 2 incompréhensible !

JULLIEN Robert

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 22 août 2021

Le titre résume tout, j'au un lecteur bluray dezoné qui lit tous les blu ray,
sauf celui-là ! je l'ai assayé sur un lecteur zone 2 et là il passe !
Encore un mystére ! Mr JULLIEN Robeert.

Martine Carol a été une actrice inemployée!!!

philippe dupont

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 14 octobre 2019

Je redécouvre ce film de Ophiuls.....et une Martine Carol incroyable et inattendue

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 3 juin 2017

Ne pas confondre avec le très beau Lola de Demi. Martine Carol manque de perversité, peut être est ce voulu par Ophuls? Mais à regarder et à reregarder.

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 29 novembre 2017

Un chef-d’œuvre du grand Max Ophuls. On a rarement fait sentir avec une telle puissance en quoi les stars peuvent être des "bêtes de scène".

4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Roland Oberlin

Poignant

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 21 novembre 2019

Une oeuvre qui vous prend aux tripes

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 22 août 2018

sublissime !!! la succulente Martine Carol ...un bijou baroque !!!

Commenté en France 🇫🇷 le 20 avril 2019

Comme Hotel diu Nord cela ne marche pas sur le lecteur Sony. Les autres sont OK.

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Portland Bill

Martine Carol is incredible as Lola Montes

Commenté au Royaume-Uni 🇬🇧 le 2 novembre 2017

I must confess I only bought this for Anton Walbrook, with whom I've long been besotted. I wasn't expecting to watch it right through and be left in awe of a truly great film, which is what happened. At the beginning I wasn't keen on the character of Lola Montes, she seemed shallow and a user of men...however, as her story unfolds, so does her integrity and great strength. Martine Carol gives such an incredible performance that I felt a true understanding of Lola develop. From being initially unlikeable, by the end of the film my heart was breaking for her. After many affairs, driven by a need to survive in a man's world, to finally find real love and have it ripped away is so terribly sad. It has to be one of the most striking films I've ever seen. Lola wants to die in the circus stunt at the end, and survives, but in the final scene you can't help but realise she's dead on the inside. Carol just astounds me in this film, conveying so much emotion just in her eyes. Visually it's a beautiful thing, with lavish sets, costumes and locations, but it reaches very deep into the human heart.

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Keith M

Ophuls’ Grand Finale

Commenté au Royaume-Uni 🇬🇧 le 20 septembre 2015

With Lola Montès, Max Ophuls’ last completed film in 1955, the film-maker crowned a stunning series of 'late French’ films (La Ronde, Le Plaisir and Madame De…) and, in many ways, Lola pulled together all the sublime cinematic qualities of the earlier films. OK, gone is Christian Matras’ evocative black-and-white cinematography, (suitably?) replaced for the ‘epic scale’ Lola with the same man’s lush CinemaScope Eastmancolor colours, and perhaps Lola gives us rather less in the way of Ophuls’ defining long-tracking shot sequences, but we have much to replace these features, including the stunning, grand circus backdrop for Ophuls’ linking narrative and a typically sharp, (frequently) ironic screenplay by Jacques Natanson, based on the novel by Cécil Saint Laurent (itself based on the life of the mid-19th century real-life dancer and courtesan Lola Montez).

Where Lola Montès, arguably, scores over all Ophuls (even La Ronde, to which it bears a resemblance in this respect) is in the way it morphs between current and past 'realities’, using Peter Ustinov’s superb, cynical depiction of the circus ringmaster to guide us through Martine Carol’s sensationalised transition from Lola as shy, retiring youth to celebrated (and scandalous) ‘Spanish dancer’ and courtesan, 'plying her wares’ to the artistic, royal and political aristocracy ('That makes 42’) across Europe (and beyond). Ophuls’ use of the risky, 'high-wire act’-nature of the 'big top’ as a metaphor for Lola’s chosen life path (now a 'fallen woman’) is a stroke of genius, 'rammed home’ (in satirical terms) by Ustinov’s ringmaster, whose American Mammoth Circus comes across as akin to an incarnation of an exploitative tabloid newspaper (perhaps run by Ustinov’s equivalent of Piers Morgan! – ‘Scandal means money’).

Acting-wise, Carol (although a controversial choice foisted on Ophuls) is excellent, both as the young, nervous and mature, feisty (and, latterly, world weary and frail) Lola – though, for me, not quite as good as I imagine Danielle Darrieux would have been in the role. (The 35-year old Carol also struggles, unsurprisingly, to entirely convince as the 16-year old Lola). Ustinov is also very impressive as the domineering master of ceremonies, switching between languages with ease (as does the film, somewhat disconcertingly, in the 2008 restoration). The other particularly notable turn here is that of Anton Walbrook excellent (as ever) as the increasingly senile King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who falls under Lola’s 'gold-digging’ spell (in order to pay her 6-week old hotel bill) before the libertarian dancer and model causes such a stir as to warrant expulsion from Bavaria – Lola and Ludwig’s initial meeting provides a highlight scene as the former rips open her bodice to convince the King of her 'potential’.

As with all late-Ophuls, there really is just so much to delight in Lola Montès. Every Matras frame – whether shot through windows, gratings, lace curtains or a safety net, off-kilter or rotating, in studio or on location – is meticulously composed (some with the CinemaScope frame reduced to increase intimacy) and the film’s décor is (of course) second to none. Other comparators? Once again, I’m drawn to Powell & Pressburger (Powell was apparently an early potential choice as director of Lola); then, in terms of a tale of a show-person’s fall from grace, Raging Bull, and as a theatrical piece, concluded by a closing curtain, Les Enfants du Paradis. Suffice to say, like all late Ophuls, it’s a truly spectacular piece of cinema and comes highly recommended.

The newly restored version of the film on the 2008 Second Sight DVD contains an intriguing 70-minute making-of documentary and a commentary by film historian Susan White.

3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Stagger Lee

That Rare Thing - A Perfect Film...

Commenté au Royaume-Uni 🇬🇧 le 11 décembre 2015

There are few films that I have seen which have approached cinematic perfection. 'Andrei Rublev' is one. 'The Shining' is another and perhaps, the likes of 'Citizen Kane' would (predictably) be in there too. There are others but they are small in number. 'Lola Montes' belongs in that number. Such dash! Such style! A film that, for all its opulence and visual bravado, maintains at its black heart a dreadful fatalism which lends credence to this otherwise fantastical tale. The expansive cinematography, the vibrant costumes and sets alongside the delightful cast all conjure something that will live long in any film buff's memory.

I truly cannot recommend it highly enough.

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Ali K

Thank god for upscaling

Commenté au Royaume-Uni 🇬🇧 le 7 février 2019

In the absence of a region 2 English subtitled Blu-ray of this Ophuls classic this DVD hits the spot.

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Stuart Price

For the money paid very poor. All other Criterion releases I've got play fine

Commenté au Royaume-Uni 🇬🇧 le 9 mai 2018

The film was stunning up to chapter 19 and then just froze.For the money paid very poor.All other Criterion releases I've got play fine.Maybe a bad batch.

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