Ever since I purchased this film a few weeks ago, my wife has been demanding an explanation as to why I got a letter from an unknown woman. I keep trying to ascribe it to my charisma, but she won't buy it. Although Letter From an Unknown Woman is a Hollywood film, it has a distinctly continental feel to it. That's because it is the handiwork of French director Max Ophüls, who made his home, by necessity, in Hollywood during World War II.

Historical Background: Max Ophüls was born in 1902 in Saarbrucken, Germany, which lies near the French border. His birth name was Oppenheimer and his parents were German Jews. Max adopted Ophüls as a stage name to avoid embarrassing his parents, since acting was not considered a very respectable profession, at the time, in his parents' circle. When anti-Semitism became rampant in Germany in the early thirties, Ophüls moved with his wife, actress Hilde Wall, to France. He had already gained experience as a director in both theater (at Vienna's famed Burgtheater) and in cinema, via three feature films made in Austria. In the years leading up to World War II, Ophüls further refined his craft, making films in both France and the Netherlands. His penchant for opulent sets, graceful tracking shots, and long takes became increasingly evident during this time.

With the fall of France in 1940, Ophüls quickly moved his family to Switzerland and then on to Hollywood, where he worked as a director for hire starting in 1941. He worked in American under an anglicized version of his stage name, "Opuls." His start in Hollywood was very frustrating because his first several projects were all either abandoned or turned over to other directors. After getting his bearings, however, he completed four American films: The Exile (1947), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Caught (1949), and Reckless Moment (1949). Letter from an Unknown Woman is widely considered the best of Ophüls's Hollywood products and stands as one of the most elevated examples of his elegant approach to filmmaking.

After returning to France in 1950, Ophüls directed four additional films before his untimely death in 1957. All four are rightly judged as masterworks. La Ronde (1950) was followed by Le Plaisir (1952), then The Earrings of Madame de . . . (1953) and Lola Montès (1955). Ophüls was father of Marcel Ophüls, who later directed a stellar documentary film called The Sorrow and the Pity (1971).

The Story: In the Vienna of 1900, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) returns home after a night on the town, having been goaded into a duel by one Baron Johann Strauffer, a man who is, unfortunately, an excellent shot with a pistol. Brand assures his mute manservant, John (Art Smith), that he has no intention of doing anything so foolish as actually going through with the duel. He orders his man to pack his suitcase and arrange for a carriage. He'll be leaving town for a while. John nods and then hands Brand a letter that has just arrived, from an unknown woman. Brand opens the envelope and finds a rather lengthy letter. He is busy washing his hands, but stops short when he reads the letter's opening line: "By the time you read this letter, I may already be dead." His attention now piqued, Brand becomes fully absorbed in the content of the letter. We learn, as he learns, what the letter has to say, in a series of flashbacks. It tells the story of a woman's lifelong love for and obsession with Brand, quite without his ever having comprehended it.

As a teenager, Lisa developed a powerful crush on Stefan, who was her neighbor. Brand was a talented young concert pianist, still young enough to be considered something of a prodigy. Lisa would sit for hours in the courtyard listening to him play and watch for his comings and goings, even though his comings and goings were accompanied by a steady progression of young women. She read the reviews of all of his concerts and sometimes found excuses to enter his apartment, when he wasn't at home, to examine his décor and knickknacks. To all of this attention, the self-absorbed Stefan had been totally oblivious.

Lisa had been devastated when her widowed mother, Mrs. Berndl (Mady Christians), had become engaged to Herr Kastner, necessitating a move to Linz. There, a young Lieutenant, Leopold von Kaltnegger (John Good), had courted Lisa earnestly, proposing awkwardly, but she had rejected his offer, still cherishing the hope of true love with Stefan. When old enough to fend for herself, Lisa had returned to Vienna and taken work in the fashion salon of Frau Spitzer (Sonja Bryden), while searching for ways to throw herself in the path of her beloved. Finally, one evening, he took notice of her . . . and, why not? She was a thing of rare beauty and pure as the driven snow.

They spent a lovely afternoon dining and amusing themselves at Prater Park, where they "traveled" together on a fantasy train, consisting of a stationary cubicle, made to resemble a coach car, rocking with the rhythm of a railcar, as painted scenery rolled gracefully by, outside the window. At the end of the day, they returned to his apartment and made love. She knew practically everything about him, but he knew very little about her. The next day, Brand managed to locate Lisa at her place of work, to tell her that he had to go away with the orchestra for two weeks, but that he would look her up as soon as he returned. He never did..

Months had gone by with no effort on Brand's part to continue the relationship. For him, it was just another in a long string of one-night stands. For Lisa, it was the pinnacle of her romantic aspirations and had left her with a lasting reminder, in the form of a pregnancy. She gave birth to a son, named him Stefan, but refused to tell the nuns the father's name. If Brand couldn't return her love, at least she'd be the one woman who never asked anything of him. Later, Lisa married Baron Johann Stauffer, as much to provide legitimacy for Stefan Jr. as for any other reason. Stefan Jr. (Leo B. Pessin) grew into a marvelous young lad.

SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP DOWN TO THEMES TO AVOID.

Some years later, Stefan and Lisa spied one another at the opera. Realizing that she could not avert her gaze from him or he from her, Lisa left her box and called for her carriage. Stefan intercepted her, demanding to know if they had ever met before. She broke free from the conversation and reached her carriage, where her husband was waiting for her. Stauffer warned her that he would not tolerate her seeing Stefan, but she had feared that she would be unable to resist doing so. Stefan Jr. was sent to his grandparents and Lisa went to find Stefan at his apartment. He still couldn't even recognize her as one of his previous lovers and had begun his seduction routine all over again. Finally realizing the shallowness of his feelings, Lisa quietly left. Outside, Stauffer has seen his wife's arrival at her lover's apartment and later challenged Brand to the duel that is now imminent. Brand reaches the end of Lisa's letter, to which is appended a note from the nuns that Lisa had requested, just before she died, that the letter be delivered to him. Brand has taken so long to read the letter that morning has arrived and the seconds arrive to escort him to the dueling locale. He seems resigned.

Themes: Each person has their own ideas about the nature of love as well as needs in relation to love. Lisa was a romantic who believed in love as an all-consuming devotion. She was a lot more attuned to what it means to love than to be loved. It never occurred to her to wonder if Stefan could or would love her in return. Her need was to be true to her devotion.

Stefan, by contrast, had a boyish immaturity in his character and the kind of narcissistic self-absorption that is commonplace among those fawned over excessively, from an early age. His need for love was limited to a need for brief bouts of female companionship, without long-term involvement. He was handsome enough and charming enough to be able to attract a succession of women to meet his needs. I'm not as hard on Stefan as are some other reviewers, who disparage him with such terms as "cad," "philanderer," or a man seeking a "string of conquests." I see nothing inherently immoral about Stefan preferring a succession of casual relationships to a long-term commitment, so long as he honestly represented the limits of his intentions. His relationships may be shallow in comparison to deeper love relationships, but he preferred, apparently, to preserve his independence, while meeting his occasional needs for companionship in more superficial ways. The only action for which I specifically take Stefan to task was his failure to return to Lisa after promising to do so. Although one can't admire Stefan for his shallow self-centeredness, one ought to respect that each person has his own needs and limitations. If a man or woman is incapable of genuine commitment, it is far better that they remain single than marry and then violate the terms of their marriage relationship.

Love is always difficult, partly because ideas about what love should entail may not mesh. Certainly that was the case for Lisa and Stefan. Had Stefan been searching for the kind of devoted love that Lisa had to offer him, he would have recognized what she could provide, during their day and night of romance together. She was fortunate, in a way, that he did not imagine himself in love with her because, had he married her, their marriage would have been a disaster. He was simply not capable of giving love in return.

The one false step in this film is the ending. Being a film that idealizes romantic love as the end-all and be-all of existence, the film imagines that Stefan, having finally grasped the magnitude of Lisa's devotion, which he had allowed to slip through his fingers, suddenly realizes that he had overlooked the one thing that could have made him happy all along. The reality is that highly self-absorbed, narcissistic people are neither capable of nor made happy by romantic devotion. Stefan's personality was formed by his youth as a "prodigy" and could not have been reconstructed by even Lisa's boundless offer of devotion. Love only works when it is both offered and desired.

Some reviewers fault Lisa for her naivety, in failing to understand that Stefan could not love her in return, but it is interesting that not a single reviewer faults Lisa in relation to her violation of her marriage to Baron Stauffer. If Stefan "used" Lisa, it was for a night, after which he cast her aside. Lisa "used" Stauffer for however many years he cared for her and her son, Stefan Jr., and was prepared to cast him aside. Stauffer offered her his love, but she could not fully accept it, just as Stefan had been unable to accept what she offered to him. Lisa violated a commitment while Stefan never offered one. Lisa is not a victim in this film; she chose her own course of action.

Production Values: The highly literate screenplay for this film was adapted by Howard Koch from a story written by Stefan Zweig. With respect to thematic substance, I rate this film as only good, not great. With respect to structural elegance and sophistication, I would rate this as one of the finest films I've seen. The artistry inherent in both the cinematography and the soundtrack is simply stunning. Each moment of drama is given added weight and levels of meaning by the camerawork and the music.

At the most overt level, Ophüls and cinematographer Franz Planer very nicely capture the aura of turn-of-the-century Austria with period costumes and beautifully composed mise-en-scene. Since Vienna is a musical city par excellence, Composer Daniele Amfitheatrof also contributes significantly to establishing the atmosphere, especially through the diegetic (within the context of the story or frame) portion of the score.

More than any other director in the history of cinema, Ophüls directs his movies like a musical conductor, not so much like a symphony orchestra as like a part-song (canon or round). The drama develops simultaneously through a number of distinct voices. To be sure, there's the dialog, within the flashbacks and present time scenes. Then, there's occasional voiceover narrative, spoken by Lisa, representing the contents of her letter. The flashbacks combine, in a sense, Lisa's current understanding, as expressed in the letter, of what transpired with her direct involvement at the time of the events. Sometimes, one viewpoint contrasts ironically with the other.

Then, the camera adds another voice. That may sound like a strange way of putting it – until you've made yourself acquainted with Ophüls's film style. For example, Ophüls's famous lyrical camera movements aptly underscore Lisa's romantic yearnings. Ophüls also uses the camera to establish "echoes" from one portion of the film to another. We see, for example, the young Lisa hiding in the shadows at the top of a stairwell watching Stefan returning home with a girl on his arm. The girl is dressed a bit like a floozy and giggles as she is let into his apartment. Later in the film, we see Lisa arrive with Stefan from the same shot angle, but wearing a modest outfit and exhibiting demure, ladylike behavior. The combination of similarity and dissimilarity between the two scenes establishes (through images rather than dialog) that Lisa is engaged in a deeply felt romantic moment but Stefan is merely repeating his standard seduction ritual.

Then, the soundtrack adds still another expository voice. Sometimes the non-diegetic (background) music helps to establish the mood of a scene. When Stefan spots the opening line of the letter from Lisa, an ominous sound, provided by the strings and tympani, underscores his alarm. By contrast, the carnival-like themes, at Prater Park, underscore the couple's playful flirtations. That much is a pretty standard contribution from a soundtrack. With Ophüls, however, the soundtrack is just as likely to comment ironically on what is happening. In the scene in Linz, for example, Lt. Kaltnegger, in preparation for his proposal of marriage, wants to make Linz seem as attractive a place as Vienna for a girl to settle, by proudly asserting, "we also have good music here," but the nearby military brass band struggles clumsily through a bit of Wagner. Then, as the lackluster music recedes, the hapless Kaltnegger fumbles his marriage proposal, as well. Sometimes the diegetic music is used to provide distanciation by contrasting with the dramatic situation and, therefore, seeming indifferent to it.

Still other times, the music is used to establish an underlying layer of feelings or thought. The first time we encounter Stefan, he is playing the Piano Étude No. 3 in D flat major, by Franz Liszt, and its theme then becomes a kind of leit motif for Stefan for the rest of the film. When the young Lisa surreptitiously walks around Stefan's apartment, one day, we know that she is thinking about him because we hear fragments of his theme. We hear it again, toward the end of the film, as Lisa approaches Stefan's apartment for her last visit to him. The various musical themes are also used, like the photography, to establish echoes. Thus, we hear the theme from Prater Park as Stefan is reading that portion of the letter. Finally, the music is even used as part of the drama itself. As the young Lisa, swinging in the courtyard, is listening raptly to Stefan practicing a difficult passage, he reaches a portion with which he is still struggling. We see his frustration and Lisa feels it. The tempo quickens until suddenly the music stops. Lisa springs to her feet in the courtyard as Stefan slams the piano lid shut.

Ophüls was the unparalleled master of pace and tempo in cinema. The oft-mentioned fluidity of his films was an artifact of tight control of rhythm and pace. Ophüls actually made musical notations on his scene sheets, such as "allegro" or "andante cantabile." Sometimes his camera actually moves to the beat of the music.

Letter From an Unknown Woman was produced by John Houseman, through the agency of the production company that had been formed by Joan Fontaine and her husband, William Dozier. Fontaine's performance is one of the best of her career. She is both charming and expressive. She sometimes has to work a bit in the background and the shadows, in keeping with her character's kind of stalking mentality, but she radiates even then. Fontaine was one of the Hollywood greats of her era, appearing in such films as The Women (1939), Gunga Din (1939), Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Jane Eyre (1944), and Ivanhoe (1952). She won an Oscar for her work in Suspicion (see my list Celebrating the Oscar Divas: All Seventy-Seven Best Actress Oscar Winners) and was nominated two other times. She probably should have been nominated for this film as well. She flawlessly handles the film's requirement for a transition from love-struck youth to mature woman of poise.

The screenplay very nicely draws Louis Jourdan's character, Brand. He's no one-dimensional cad, but a sensitive and narcissistic man with limitations in his ability to genuinely love. Jourdan does a nice job with the part. He was a French actor who joined the French Resistance after the Gestapo arrested his father. After the war, he went to Hollywood. He appeared in The Paradine Case (1948), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Gigi (1958), and Octopussy (1983), but his turn in Letter From an Unknown Woman, opposite Fontaine, may have been the plum of his career. Among the supporting performances, Art Smith, as John, Brand's manservant, is the most interesting.

Bottom-Line: The VHS copy that I purchased is part of a six-film series from Republic Pictures called "Legendary Ladies of the Silver Screen." Each film begins with an introduction by Roddy McDowall relating to the featured actress – Joan Fontaine, in this case. The film was remastered "to pristine condition" for this Collector's Edition and is, indeed, in excellent condition. From the point of view of performances and cinematic craftsmanship, this film is as good as any I've seen. The story is moving and romantic, but a tad weak in its psychological foundation. I'd give it 4.5 stars were that a possibility, deducting a half-star from maximum for the thematic shallowness, but otherwise it’s a near perfect film. My thanks to Stephen Murray for suggesting this film to me.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older