Presented by TIFF
Featuring several rarities and restorations, this retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox celebrates the German master whose famously opulent visual style never overshadowed his moral gravity and formal mastery.
The 20-film program runs February 13 to March 15.
Prior to a
screening of Ophüls’ last film made before his emigration from Nazi Germany to France,
Jutta Brendemühl, Program Curator at the Goethe-Institut Toronto, discusses the socio-political implications of what is regarded as one of Ophüls' most accomplished romantic dramas, as well as production and censorship aspects and the film's lasting allure:
Liebelei
by Max Ophüls (Germany, 1932, 85 min., 14A, German with subtitles)
ARCHIVAL PRINT!
"As I have indicated on many occasions, I love Liebelei," rhapsodized Andrew Sarris when the film was revived at the New York Film Festival, and continued, "We can only speak of a cinematic tradition of obsessive style to which Liebelei pertains, a tradition that embraces both Sunrise and Ugetsu." Based on a Schnitzler play, this exquisite romance established Ophüls' favourite setting (turn-of-the-century Vienna) and theme (doomed love), and is now ranked among his best work. Opening, like Visconti's Senso, at the opera (here, a production of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio), Liebelei tells the tale of a young officer who has a brief affair with a violinist's daughter (a radiant Magda Schneider, mother of Romy) and then is forced to submit to an unyielding code of honour. Ophüls' vigorous but graceful visual dynamics endow the theme of love unto (and after) death with a mystical grandeur, and the final tracking shot proves that Sarris' reference to Ugetsu could not be more appropriate. (Nazi censors later removed Ophüls' name from the credits when the film became a great success.)
Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
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