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Mubi is showing Max Ophüls' Liebelei (1933) from November 9 - December 8, 2016 in most countries around the world.While the primary players in Max Ophüls’ 1933 film Liebelei may be introduced at the same opera house, seeing the same performance of Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” the real drama is produced away from the stage, though it is rarely any less histrionic. As secretive private passions and illicit romances are revealed, so softly and elegantly in what would become the presentational norm for Ophüls, a genuinely pure, ultimately heartbreaking, relationship emerges from the scandalous furor. When philandering German Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer (Wolfgang Liebeneiner) meets and falls for Christine Weyring (Magda Schneider), the daughter of an opera musician, he is commendably quick to break off his essentially lustful involvement with the adulterous Baroness von Eggersdorff (Olga Tschechowa). Unlike Arthur Schnitzler’s source play (Schnitzler, who would also provide the foundation for Ophüls’ excellent 1950 film,...

Max Ophüls, 1934, PG, Eureka!

Max Ophüls (1902-57) was firmly established in Germany as a director for stage, radio and cinema with one minor movie masterpiece (Liebelei) to his credit when the Nazis came to power. As a prominent Jewish artist, he went into exile never to return, working elsewhere in Europe, then in Hollywood, before returning to France to make La Ronde and three other masterworks before his untimely death. Stories of love at first sight, frustrated affairs, tragic encounters – these were his forte, with haunting, romantic music, and exquisite tracking shots that take the audience down streets, through rooms, up and down staircases.

All this is here in the one movie he made in Italy, La Signora di tutti ("Everybody's Lady"), which brought him the prize for technical achievement at the second Venice film festival. The enchanting Isa Miranda (left)plays a chanteuse and Italian movie star who reviews...

My experience with Lola Montes director Max Ophuls was zero prior to my first screening of Criterion's new Blu-ray edition of his final directorial feature. As a result, while watching the special features and listening to the fascinating audio commentary included, I realized the work of Ophuls cannot be judged by watching one film. It's also my impression he's a director whose signature will be found on most all of his films, leading me to believe the more of his films I see, the more I will appreciate what I am watching. While I enjoyed Lola Montes, and noticed plenty of directorial control as well as an obvious auteur style, I still felt I was missing something.

In September of 2008, Criterion released The Earrings of Madame de..., La ronde and Le plaisir on DVD, three of Ophuls most recognized films with The Earrings of Madame de... probably being his most loved.