Diagonaldi Very well executed

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

bkoganbing 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.

jc-osms Preposterously plotted but stylishly directed and impeccably acted, this is vintage Golden Age Hollywood melodrama. So much of the story-line is improbable, as the young Joan Fontaine's poor young French teenager develops a lifetime crush on the debonair but rakish concert pianist Louis Jourdain, a fascination that has tragic consequences for both. Like another classic film from around the same time "Portrait Of Jennie" the mistake is made in initially having the female lead attempt to carry herself off as a much younger version of herself, but once she matures into adult-hood, Fontaine is effective as the quietly enigmatic woman forever drawn to Jourdain's debonair charms.I found it equally hard to believe that Jourdain's character could forget his previous encounters with Fontaine, especially the way that Max Ophuls directs the telling scenes, never mind that she eventually goes on to father his child. Such a plot could only end in death and tragedy and while I couldn't believe a word of it, still it was wonderfully entertaining along the way.The costumes and sets are excellent and Jourdain and Fontaine are to be commended too for their fine performances, but doyens of film-making will particularly enjoy the skill with which director Ophuls employs his camera-work, so fluidly at times that the action appears to float in front of the viewer's eyes.In a way, this film reminded me of grand opera, a wholly unbelievable story brought to life by the skill of its creator.

avik-basu1889 'Letter from an Unknown Woman' is the first Max Ophüls I have seen. The film certainly gave me a lot of things to think about. In a nutshell, I thought the screenplay and plot written by Ophüls and Howard E. Koch which is based on the novella of the same name is good, but what makes the film special is Ophüls' direction and choice of camera movements and visual rhythm.The screenplay is not something that completely blew me away. There are a lot of things that felt familiar due to my acquaintance with some other films belonging to the label of 'melodrama' made during the 40s, 50s and 60s. The film does give off the familiar vibe of inevitable tragedy right from the early scenes. The screenplay for the most part works, but there are moments which felt a bit weak. The strength of the film lies in the way Ophüls beautifully gives us the elaborate sequence of Lisa's ever growing infatuation for Stefan, it is believable and sweet, Ophüls doesn't shy away from the bitter eventualities of a doomed infatuation,etc. Ophüls also somewhat handles the potentially sexist element in the film well and gives the character of Lisa growth and strength as she gradually matures. Although initially her life seems to completely revolve around the man and she is shown to pretty much worship him, but later she gets to take a bold decision to uphold her self-respect which undercuts the lack of layers in her character in the initial part of the film. But there are certain elements in the screenplay that felt a bit weak, for example there is a scene where one character departs via a train with the promise that he/she will return after two weeks, we then suddenly jump to another scene with a jump in the timeline which felt rushed and not seamless. There is another railway station sequence which comes later in the film which does a callback to the previous railway station scene, but the scene ends with a bit of a foreshadowing of what's to come and it felt a bit too on the nose, and heavy handed.For me the best part of the film is Ophüls' sophisticated use of the camera. He composes and choreographs a lot of scenes in a beautifully symmetrical fashion. Music plays an important role in the narrative as Stefan is a musician and it is his musical prowess that initially attracts Lisa to him even before she has seen him in person. I believe Ophüls' intention was using a symmetry that is found in classical musical pieces in the way he stages movement and composes frames by referencing,mirroring and juxtaposing earlier scenes. Apart from the aforementioned railway station scene, every other scene involving symmetrical touches work. Some examples of this visual symmetry is the sequence in Linz which starts with the dialogue being muted out by the noise of a horse drawn cart and ends with the dialogue being muted out again by the marching band playing the 'Radetzky March'. Another brilliant pair of symmetric scenes are the stair case scenes where the camera captures movement from the same position in both scenes but with completely different perspectives. Even the first and last shot of the film are beautifully symmetric and bookend the film very well. There is a famous scene in an amusement park where Stefan and Lisa have a conversation on a virtual train ride which pretty much succinctly summarises the theme of the film which is how love can be an illusion just like the illusion of visiting different cities and countries that they were enjoying with the ride.Joan Fontaine is brilliant. In the initial part of the film, she plays the adorable girl next door. Although she plays a simple woman who pretty much thinks about nothing but catching the attention of Stefan, but she is so sweet, that one can't help but like her in spite of the thin nature of character at the beginning of the film. However thankfully she does go through a transformation and becomes this regal character belonging to high society who takes bold decisions and she goes through this transformation effortlessly. Although the character of Stefan is not the most likable character, but Louis Jourdan emotes a sense of disillusionment and dissatisfaction extremely well which makes us care a bit about him too so that Stefan doesn't just become the stereotypical handsome jerk. 'Letter from an Unknown Woman' by Max Ophüls is a very stylishly made film. Ophüls' style of camera movements and scene composition is very musical in its rhythm and symmetry. The storyline itself was something the likes of which I am familiar with, but it is Max Ophüls' directorial style that impressed me and I certainly intend to explore his filmography further.

r-brostowicz At first glance, Letter from an Unknown Woman is a far-fetched tragedy, one vaguely reminiscent of the great romantic tragedies of the past. There are numerous examples throughout literature of love stories ending in tragic deaths. Lisa is another example of the love-struck woman who spends her entire life waiting for her one true love to realize that she is everything he's ever needed. Unfortunately, Stephan is too self- centered to see it and Lisa's heart is broken. Even when he chases her out of the opera, he cannot remember that she had been the woman he had met ten years ago. He knows that there is something about her but he can't place his finger on it. On the other hand, Lisa is too neurotic to speak up and tell him who she is. Just as with the case of Romeo and Juliette, a little bit of communication could go a long way. However, since Lisa is incapable of ever telling Stephan the truth, she is doomed from the beginning. Even as a child, she never attempted to speak to her neighbor. Instead, she sat outside of his window and spent an unhealthy amount of energy fantasizing about what Stephan must be like. Part of me wants to reject this entire story as a pathetic example of how women fall in love and waste a lifetime of longing for someone who doesn't deserve their attention, yet part of me can relate to Lisa's dilemma. Every woman has met that man who never notices her or gives her the attention she so desperately wants. When Lisa looks wistfully at Stephan, she is embodying every bit of desire that a lovesick girl has ever felt. He does give her attention during their nighttime adventure, but it seems that she realizes that she is one of many women who have received his attention. Stephan is a lady's man, who always knows the perfect thing to say to make a woman feel like the only girl in the entire world. His charm is powerful and Lisa is under his spell. She says in her letter, that she wanted to be the only woman who never asked him for anything, meaning that she both understands that there are other women, and reinforces (to herself, at least) that she is the right woman for him. When she goes to his apartment at the end of the film, she expects him to remember her and confess his love to her. This never happens. The realization comes when he explains why he stopped playing piano. Lisa believed that when she left his life, some magic was lost and he was so heartbroken by her disappearance that he could no longer continue performing. Alas, he tells her that he simply found other passions to pursue. Stephan is neither a villain nor a hero. He spends most of the film blissfully unaware that Lisa exists. He cannot be scrutinized for being a free spirited lady's man, which is simply his character. Lisa is her own downfall for having an impossible ideal of Stephan. She has him placed upon a pedestal and she also fails to open up to him. He asks her to reveal information about herself but she only cares to learn about him. This sort of fascination could never lead to a healthy relationship. Her obsession with him is both unhealthy and slightly alarming. For as much as I can relate to young Lisa's infatuation over Stephan, her inability to cope with the world around her and move on is too unrealistic. There are many outlandish elements of this film which point out the impossibility of it all, while reminding me to not be like Lisa. I say, take this film as an example of what not to be. Love is a give and take, a lesson that perhaps many of us can learn from Lisa's downfall.