La signora di tutti

Max Ophüls directed so many masterpieces with great actor direction in great and sad love stories. All that shot with a virtuoso camera (travellings or real time shots like in "Madame De" or "Letters From An Unknown Woman").

All these masterpieces are available. But there is one hidden masterpiece directed by Max Ophüls and it is one of his first movie : "La Signorra Di Tutti", only available in Italy (where it was shot, Ophüls was an international director). And it is an incredible masterpiece with again some virtuoso cinematography and narration (flashbacks in flashbacks). It is a powerful love drama with insane scenes.

Sure Orson Welles watched it and provided him so many ideas. And 20 years later, Ophüls directed his most well known movie, "Lola Montès", with the same story.

It is urgent to release this hidden treasure for real cinema lovers.

Signora di tutti is truly one of the most underrated films of movie history. When I saw it ten years ago I was marveled about its modernity although belonging to 1934. I´m sure Welles undoubtely watched it before filming Citizen Kane, because Max Ophuls´s narration and editing techniques in that picture somehow anticipated Orson´s landmark screen jewel. This movie deserves a standout place in the development of film language.

"La Signora di Tutti" is the only film the maestro Max Ophüls made in Italy and it already confirmed his genius. The film - an eloquent and often tragic study of an ill-fated movie star Gaby Doriot who rises her way to a depressingly patriarchal world and later becomes a victim of its cruelty - is certainly nowhere near the richness, splendour, and lilting mastery of Ophüls' celebrated later classics, but it is fascinating in its own ways. The intricate flashback structure and the beautiful Isa Miranda's heartbreaking incarnation of the spoiled Gaby seem to anticipate Ophüls' later works, particularly his final masterpiece, "Lola Montes" (1955). The film is apparently not for every taste but if you are a fan of Ophuls as I am, it is an indispensable viewing.

In Max Ophuls'work,if you were born a woman,you were born to suffer.If there are exceptions,they are very rare : from "Liebelei" where a woman's true love was only a "liebelei" to "Sans Lendemain" where Edwige Feuillère was prisoner of a racy past to "letter from an unknown woman " where Joan Fontaine 's love was in vain to the masterpieces of the fifties "Madame de" and "Lola Montès" .Even in the much debated "De Mayerling à Sarajevo" the historic Sophie Chotek (Feuillère again) character was also a humiliated woman.

"La signora di Tutti" actually predates "Lola Montès" by twenty years:it's a long flashback after the heroine's suicide.The first sequences are nervy ,tense,the dialog begins with numbers and you soon realize they're talking about money.Isa MIranda portrays with talent a woman whose biggest fault is to be all along the film the right woman in the wrong place.Every man she loves leads her to a dead end : the music teacher,the businessman,his son.

Great scenes:the opera ,an imaginary way for the lovers to escape ;Ophuls's great fascination for the trains (see also "letter to an unknown woman" "De Mayerling à Sarajevo" and even the "la maison Tellier" segment in "LE Plaisir" in a comic way);Alma's tragic death ,the shadow of the wheelchair on the wall,the radio which Gabriella smashes ; and above all,the final pictures when the press slowly stops .

A strong influence on Mankiewicz ("Barefoot Comtessa" ),Louis Malle (" Vie privée")and on the melodrama genre (Sirk)

The flashback was not so innovative after all(the year before,Stahl did the same in "only yesterday" ) but the directing which sometimes has thriller accents (the scene when the heroine hears a radio nobody can't hear would not be out of place in a psychological suspense;ditto for the wheelchair scene in the night which is really awesome.

Intriguingly, you won't find Max Ophüls' name anywhere in the credits, and the movie is listed as uncredited in his filmography. However, in some (but not all) posters of the time he is clearly identified as the director. The movie is the only one made by Ophüls in Italy (he had just fled Nazi Germany). It was commissioned by Angelo Rizzoli, editorial magnate and budding movie producer, who wanted to put on screen a novel by Salvator Gotta serialized in one of his newspapers. One may conjecture that Ophüls' name was erased from the credits to distribute the movie in Germany.

This is Ophüls' sixth film (excluding shorts) and he had already developed the innovative camerawork that he perfected in his later masterpieces: long takes, tracking shots that follow characters from room to room without cutting, 360 degree panning, multiple dissolves, elaborate flashback devices. A particularly striking sequence involves a shot/reverse shot of a conversation between a woman rowing a boat and a man driving a car on the shore. There are many brilliant scenes. The film opens with three clashes of cymbals on a dark screen, which turn out to be the beginning of a song being played on a phonograph. At the end, a character's demise is marked by presses stopping printing of her posters.

Unfortunately, Ophüls' skills are used in service of a script (adapted from Gotta's novel) so melodramatic it borders on soap opera. Acting is uneven. Isa Miranda, in one of her first roles is strangely detached and passionless and, in 1934 she was not young enough to play a teenager as she has to do briefly. Some of the other actors are over the top, perhaps trying to make something out of awkward lines.

All in all not a satisfactory movie, but Ophüls' artistry makes it worth watching. One of the initial credit screens informs us that the movie was given a prize for "technically best Italian film" in the 2nd Biennale di Venezia. Perhaps this is a just appreciation.