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Lettre d'une inconnue

Original title: Letter from an Unknown Woman
  • 1948
  • Tous publics
  • 1h 27m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
14K
YOUR RATING
Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan in Lettre d'une inconnue (1948)
Trailer for this love story
Play trailer1:37
1 Video
97 Photos
TragedyDramaRomance

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember, who may hold the key to his downfall.A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember, who may hold the key to his downfall.A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember, who may hold the key to his downfall.

  • Director
    • Max Ophüls
  • Writers
    • Howard Koch
    • Stefan Zweig
    • Max Ophüls
  • Stars
    • Joan Fontaine
    • Louis Jourdan
    • Mady Christians
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.8/10
    14K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Max Ophüls
    • Writers
      • Howard Koch
      • Stefan Zweig
      • Max Ophüls
    • Stars
      • Joan Fontaine
      • Louis Jourdan
      • Mady Christians
    • 92User reviews
    • 53Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win total

    Videos1

    Letter From An Unknown Woman
    Trailer 1:37
    Letter From An Unknown Woman

    Photos97

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    + 91
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    Top cast99+

    Edit
    Joan Fontaine
    Joan Fontaine
    • Lisa Berndle
    Louis Jourdan
    Louis Jourdan
    • Stefan Brand
    Mady Christians
    Mady Christians
    • Frau Berndle
    Marcel Journet
    • Johann Stauffer
    Art Smith
    Art Smith
    • John
    Carol Yorke
    • Marie
    Howard Freeman
    Howard Freeman
    • Herr Kastner
    John Good
    • Lt. Leopold von Kaltnegger
    Leo B. Pessin
    • Stefan Jr.
    Erskine Sanford
    Erskine Sanford
    • Porter
    Otto Waldis
    Otto Waldis
    • Concierge
    Sonja Bryden
    • Frau Spitzer
    Patricia Alphin
    Patricia Alphin
    • Pretty
    • (uncredited)
    Harry Anderson
      Edit Angold
      • Middle-Aged Woman
      • (uncredited)
      Joe Ardao
      • Small man
      • (uncredited)
      Lois Austin
      • Elderly Woman
      • (uncredited)
      Polly Bailey
      • Passenger
      • (uncredited)
      • Director
        • Max Ophüls
      • Writers
        • Howard Koch
        • Stefan Zweig
        • Max Ophüls
      • All cast & crew
      • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

      User reviews92

      7.814.4K
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      Featured reviews

      8polar24

      A romantic exploration on longing, desire and regret

      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.
      8FilmCriticLalitRao

      Lettre D'Une Inconnue : Max Ophuls films the tribulations of a woman in love !!!!

      Based on Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's novella 'Brief Einer Unbekannten', Ophuls uses all his creativity at disposal to enable his technicians to capture the cowardice of men and vulnerability of women. It is not only the leading pair who serves as a good example of cowards and vulnerable people. There are also some secondary characters who provide fitting description to words such as coward and vulnerable. The names of the woman's mother and her husband come to mind to provide a suitable description. In 'Letter from an unknown woman', Max Ophuls celebrates the immense power of a letter to convey feelings of disappointment arising out of a failed love affair. The letter in question is quite a long one. It was drafted by a woman to tell her doomed life to her lover. Ophuls depicts all the troubles which a woman is compelled to take in order to get love. It would not be wrong to state that love is out of fashion in current times. It has been replaced by something which resembles love but has a certain amount of physical force. There were times in the past when intense feelings of love were appreciated. 'Letter from an unknown woman" is one such film which has the ability to transport viewers to a time when love mattered a lot.
      dougdoepke

      Exquisitely Done

      Over a period of years, a young woman is gripped by a romantic obsession with tragic results.

      Despite the heavy romantic overlay, the movie strikes me as a one-of-a-kind noir. In fact, the production contains a number of noirish earmarks. Consider the foreboding nighttime atmosphere of so many scenes; also, the heavy sense of doom surrounding Lisa's obsession; then there's Stefan's seductive charm, a kind of spiderman in reverse. And while there's no crime in the legal sense, Stefan does commit a moral crime that leaves Lisa emotionally destitute. Nothing significant hangs on this classification, but it is a way of likening Lisa's predicament to noir's typically doomed characters and the dark universe they inhabit.

      Noir or not, the movie bears the clear stamp of an artistic sensibility thanks to director Ophuls, along with expert art design, set design, and cinematography. It's these formal qualities that lift the material above conventional soap opera. And though the screenplay seems pretty implausible at times, the device of the letter and Stefan's response to it create a beautifully rounded morality tale. Of course, having a 30-year old Fontaine play a teenager in the opening scenes is a stretch; however, Ophuls manages to finesse, using long and medium shots instead of revealing close-ups. Despite the difficult challenge, Fontaine manages to bring off her evolving role in persuasive fashion.

      All in all, the movie remains an exquisite combination of European sensibility and Hollywood professionalism. Together they produce an unforgettable visual and emotional experience that successfully challenges the condescending label of "a woman's picture".
      8bkoganbing

      All she hears is the music

      Joan Fontaine and her husband William Dozier produced this film which contains a classic performance for Fontaine. In it she plays a woman who sees a lot more in the character of the man of her dreams than he really possesses. The object of her affection is Louis Jourdan, a womanizing concert pianist who when the film opens up is about to flee the scene rather than face an irate husband in a duel. Just as he's ready to take it on the lam, Jourdan receives a Letter From An Unknown Woman, one of many he's known in his life. He reads and the story in flashback begins.

      Like in her performance in The Constant Nymph Joan starts her performance as a child. When and widowed mother Mady Christians were living in Vienna, Jourdan was learning his craft and the sound of his playing gave her romantic fantasies.

      Later on when they meet as an adult they do have a brief affair which leaves her with child. True to his nature he leaves her and pursues his career and his romantic avocations. She was barely a blip on his radar.

      During the course of Fontaine's off screen narration of her letter, the tragedy of her life unfolds and the causes are a combination of her romantic fantasies and his lack of character. I can't say more but the end is truly heartbreaking.

      Letter From An Unknown Woman was a nice and truly original idea. It starts slowly, but you really get drawn into the story by Fontaine's off screen narration and on screen performance. Jourdan too is fascinating as a man who is less than the sum of his parts.

      A really great choice of roles for Joan Fontaine.
      8Galina_movie_fan

      White Rose is a Symbol of Neverending Love

      Deeply moving story from one of cinema's great stylists, Max Ophuls (Le Ronde, Earrings of Madam De…, Lola Montes), stars Jane Fonatain as Lisa, a young woman hopelessly in love with dashing but callous piano player Stefan (Louis Jordan). Fontain played perhaps the best role of her career and was incredibly touching and convincing as a teenage girl (she was 31 when she took the part) that fell in love from the first sight and whose whole life was under the spell of this rare unrequited love that was recognized, alas, too late. One may ask how such a beautiful, sublime, and charming creature like Lisa would carry a torch through the years for a man who uses her without pity and does not remembers her name or her face – well, the mystery of love is unsolvable. King Solomon, one of the wisest men ever lived said once, "There are three things I can't explain, and one, I can't understand - the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a ship in the sea, the way of a snake crawling up the mountain, and the way of a man to the heart of a woman." I guess, nowadays we can explain the first three mysteries but never will be able to understand the fourth one... Max Ophuls' who had worked in many European countries and "gave camera movement its finest hours in the history of the cinema" made romantic and elegant "The Letter from an Unknown Woman" in Hollywood and it is regarded as his best American movie.

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      Related interests

      Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea (2016)
      Tragedy
      Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
      Drama
      Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)
      Romance

      Storyline

      Edit

      Did you know

      Edit
      • Trivia
        Joan Fontaine's favorite movie.
      • Goofs
        While most signs in the movie are written correctly in German, since the movie is set in Austria, parts of them are in English, e.g. Stefan Brand's concert flyer, which says "Concert Program" instead of "Konzertprogramm".
      • Quotes

        Lisa Berndl: The course of our lives can be changed by such little things. So many passing by, each intent on his own problems. So many faces that one might easily have been lost. I know now that nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured; every step is counted.

      • Alternate versions
        There is an Italian edition of this film on DVD, distributed by DNA srl, "JANE EYRE (1943) + LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948)" (2 Films on a single DVD), re-edited with the contribution of film historian Riccardo Cusin. This version is also available for streaming on some platforms.
      • Connections
        Featured in Le ciné-club de Radio-Canada: Film présenté: Lettre d'une inconnue (1956)
      • Soundtracks
        Un sospiro
        (uncredited)

        Music by Franz Liszt

        Played on piano by Louis Jourdan (dubbed by Jakob Gimpel)

        Also used as main theme in the score

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      FAQ20

      • How long is Letter from an Unknown Woman?Powered by Alexa
      • Where was Lisa sending her son on that train journey and why?
      • If Stefan was so infatuated with Lisa, how is even possible that he didn't recognize her when he saw her again?

      Details

      Edit
      • Release date
        • November 5, 1948 (France)
      • Country of origin
        • United States
      • Official sites
        • Streaming on "AMT2.0 - Remember?" YouTube Chanel
        • Streaming on "Hollywood Classic Movies" YouTube Chanel
      • Language
        • English
      • Also known as
        • Letter from an Unknown Woman
      • Filming locations
        • Republic Studios - 4024 Radford Avenue, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA(Studio)
      • Production company
        • William Dozier Productions
      • See more company credits at IMDbPro

      Box office

      Edit
      • Gross worldwide
        • $953
      See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

      Tech specs

      Edit
      • Runtime
        • 1h 27m(87 min)
      • Color
        • Black and White
      • Aspect ratio
        • 1.37 : 1

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