Cartas de una enamorada

Preposterously plotted but stylishly directed and impeccably acted, this is vintage Golden Age Hollywood melodrama. So much of the story-line is improbable, as the young Joan Fontaine's poor young French teenager develops a lifetime crush on the debonair but rakish concert pianist Louis Jourdain, a fascination that has tragic consequences for both. Like another classic film from around the same time "Portrait Of Jennie" the mistake is made in initially having the female lead attempt to carry herself off as a much younger version of herself, but once she matures into adult-hood, Fontaine is effective as the quietly enigmatic woman forever drawn to Jourdain's debonair charms.

I found it equally hard to believe that Jourdain's character could forget his previous encounters with Fontaine, especially the way that Max Ophuls directs the telling scenes, never mind that she eventually goes on to father his child. Such a plot could only end in death and tragedy and while I couldn't believe a word of it, still it was wonderfully entertaining along the way.

The costumes and sets are excellent and Jourdain and Fontaine are to be commended too for their fine performances, but doyens of film-making will particularly enjoy the skill with which director Ophuls employs his camera-work, so fluidly at times that the action appears to float in front of the viewer's eyes.

In a way, this film reminded me of grand opera, a wholly unbelievable story brought to life by the skill of its creator.

Imagine yourself in 1900s Vienna among the glamour, the ritz and sweet seductive Viennese street tunes. Picture yourself falling in love with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan careening along the cobbled streets under a sparkling moonlit sky.

Ophuls' dreamlike fantasy into young love and heartache melts your heart and tantalises the most romantic in each us. The story is told in flashback by Fontaine and covers her accession from lust the true love then longing and regret. The events of the story are unfolded to us through Fontaine's final letter written to Jourdan. We discover how the lovely couple met and what resulted in them breaking away and returning to love.

The film takes us through the opulence of the rich, elegant society parties, family dynamics, and the adversities of fame and married life. The story is basically a set a flashbacks of their love together, their defining moments and their crises.

Ophuls moves the piece along in a gliding, swooning fashion. There are many wonderful shots and movements between the glistening Viennese apartments and their opulent decorations. A lot of the film is very dark, set during twilight and after midnight, and Ophuls frames each scene perfectly with the intimate symmetry of light and shadows. He is outstanding with the interiors and glass reflections; the shine of street lamps and candlelight to create a truly romantic dreamworld.

Both Fontaine and Jourdan are excellent. Together they are romantic, suave and mystical. Fontaine in particular was radiant and youthful. She shines in each scene among the darkness and sumptuous sets. The story begins with her as a coy and bashful young woman. She develops into a girl longing for love, in a state of dreamy affection to a stunningly elegant and always struggling against her desires and duties.

As a avid lover of fine music, I loved the sensual score and scenes of Jourdan rippling over the piano producing a dreamlike flowing theme. The scene at the opera was also a real treat and heartbreaking to see the principals recapturing long lost love and idealistic memories.

This is a superb melodrama about lost love and admitting that when the right love comes, we can only be so naive and captivated by the beauty of it. It was lovely to fall in and out of love with Fontaine and Jourdan, remembering that love is a desire worth waiting on.

An admirable scene sums up the whole movie:Stefan and Liza are aboard a "train" and they "travel".It's actually a fixed train,and some kind of stagehand forwards a chocolate box scenery :Venice ,Switzerland... In the real world ,trains are ominous messengers of death and despair:it's a train which takes Stefan away after their affair,a train which takes the young boy to his death.

Stefan (Jourdan)lives his selfish life without seeing anything.Ophuls(spelled Opuls in the cast and credits) shows him as a handsome nice young man,but if you look with care,you'll notice it's always Liza(Fontaine)who's looking at him with love.Jourdan seems to care but actually he knows so many women that he acts as if he's in a play:Liza's admiration means nothing to him who is a ladykiller-see the scene when Liza comes back from the station- and a celebrated musician adulated by the crowds.Liza is the romantic woman,with a zest of touch of Madame Bovary thrown in -it's not a coincidence if Minnelli chose Jourdan as Madame Bovary's lover in his eponymous movie the very same year-For her,there must be only one love ,and she's prepared to give it all.

Joan Fontaine had perhaps never been so good as here.Her whole life ,as she writes her letter (the movie is a flashback ) could have been written in the past conditional.Main influence is certainly that of John Stahl and his "only yesterday" (1933)in which Margaret Sullavan wrote John Boles such a letter.Even the young boy is present in both movies.The last page of the letter,ink-stained (or tear-stained?)takes the audience to a peak of emotion.The final predates the ending of Ophuls's "Madame de" (1953),and the scene on the "train" ,an imitation of life ,the big circus of "Lola Montes" (1955)

This is probably Louis Jourdan's best part as well.A French actor,he was never that much popular in his native country ,and he found his best parts in the US ,be it artistically (Ophuls ,Hitchcock and Minnelli) or commercially (Octopussy) speaking.

This film grows even more extraordinary when compared with its source, Stefan Zweig's novella of the same name. In the story, Stefan is a writer, not a musician. The film transforms him into a pianist, thereby insuring that his seductive art can work on the audience at the same time as it works on the heroine. This movie gets bigger every time it is viewed. It seems to offer new surprises every time, because of the perfection of its structure and the implicative richness of its mise-en-scene. The echo effects ("Two weeks!") take on fresh meanings, and there is even a good deal of religious symbolism to be found.

This movie is really great in how it conjures up so much tasteful melodrama through its structure and the unique way in that the main characters spend less time on screen together interacting than they do just being painfully tragic.

I really enjoy the structure of the piece, through the title letter which gives a sense of dated urgency if that makes any sense. We read along with the man who also doesn't not really know the whole story, and so we see through her eyes in a fresh sense his being while discovering the story along with him. It is an interesting way of making the movie. Fontaine is wonderfully vulnerable and believable as a woman who tries and tries and tries and matures and regresses through decades of life. My favorite part of course is the lovely "train ride" through different vistas, its cutesy but also a comment on how their romance is so supercilious to him but everything to her, in a fake box car. Depression may occur after viewing this film.