NFR Project: “Letter from an Unknown Woman”
Dir: Max Ophuls
Scr: Howard Koch
Pho: Franz Planer
Ed: Ted J. Kent
Premiere: April 28, 1948
86 min.
This is a very uncharacteristic Hollywood movie. This is due to three men – writer Stefan Zweig, producer John Houseman, and director Max Ophuls.
Zweig (1881-1942) was one of the world’s most popular writers. An Austrian, he wrote histories, biographies, and fiction, and was translated into many languages. When Hitler came to power, he escaped his homeland and came first to England and then America. He wrote of life and love in turn-of-the-century Vienna quite eloquently, and with a nostalgia for the pre-World War I culture of the capital. Tragically, his despair over the loss of that culture led to his eventual suicide.
John Houseman (1902-1988), known today for his acting work late in his life, was in fact a Hungarian who was educated in England, and who moved to America in 1925. After a successful career as a grain merchant, he turned to the theater and became a highly regarded writer and producer, best known for his collaborations with a young Orson Welles. When he moved into producing films, he was noted for his meticulous work on prestigious projects. Letter from an Unknown Woman is an example of his superior attention to period detail.
Max Ophuls (1902-1957) was the third Jewish man of this triumvirate of talent. An acclaimed and experienced film director, he also escaped the Nazis and came first to France, and then to America in 1941. Here he continued his career. Letter from an Unknown Woman is his most honored film from this period; he returned to Europe after World War II and made his masterpieces – La Ronde, Lola Montes, Le Plaisir, and The Earrings of Madame de . . . .
Letter is an urbane and mature work, adapted from Zweig's 1922 novella, which examines a curse of unrequited love. A young woman (Joan Fontaine) falls in love with a promising – and womanizing – pianist (Louis Jordan). After years, she finally engineers an evening with him, which he promptly forgets. However, she becomes pregnant, gives birth, and raises their son alone, unknown to him.
Years later, the woman has married an officer, who adopts her son. By chance, she sees the pianist at a concert and determines to see him again. Her husband notes this and promises that he will act with decisiveness if she pursues her passion. Ignoring him, she attempts to reunite with the pianist but finds him a shallow individual who has wasted his talent. Unfortunately, she and her son contract typhus shortly after this and die, but not before she writes a letter to the pianist explaining all. At film’s end, the pianist finds that he has been challenged to a duel by the woman’s husband, and he sets off to an uncertain fate.
The film is told primarily in flashback, and we are given a vision of fin-de-siecle Vienna, gorgeously recreated for the cameras. The subjects of sex outside of wedlock and illegitimate birth was unheard of in Hollywood at the time, but Zweig, Houseman, and Ophus together craft an adult and sophisticated story that accepts the fact that these things happen, and that morality is not entirely black and white.
Ophuls’ patented swooping camera moves are here, and his delicate touch renders this most unconventional story realistic and comprehensible. Its maturity was far beyond the American standards of the time – Ophuls would have to return to Europe to craft more films in this vein.
The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Louisiana Story.
