Lola Monts DVD Review - Paste Mag .

Chris Munoz

16 February 2010

Back in the early 2000s, the films of German-born, Paris-based director Max Ophuls languished out of print. He mightve stayed in darkness were it not for the support of admiring directors like Stanley Kubrick, Todd Haynes and P.T.

Anderson, and The New Yorker s Anthony Lane, who raved the atmosphere in [Ophuls] pictures is so good-natured, and the brilliance so gently worn, that we may not notice how acutely he's laying bare our illusions. With the slowly revived fever dream about his financially and critically disastrous last feature, Lola Monts, our portrait of the artist in his last years is complete. Eliza Rosanna Gilberta dancer and actress most frequently called by her stage name, Lola Montspioneered the cult of celebrity. In our age, where celebrity indiscretions bump war reports from the front page, its simple to see the job Montes played in the general public consciousness 150 years prior. Its fitting then that Ophuls foretells such modern media circuses, eschewing easy autobiography for his hero and setting her in a context more grandiose and garish : a genuine circus. The film opens with Monts, the main draw in a pinwheeling fanfare of crimson and gold, as an American audience crassly barks questions on her past lovers and physical measurements.

Well show everything that ladies dream about doing, but lack the bravery to do, the circus carnie announces, enacting the scandals that made ( and unmade ) Monts. From the big-top tent, were whisked around the globe as our heroine marries for love, fortune, celebrity and caprice, each eventuality cast in an outrageous, raving hint. Monts ascent thru Western european high society in the middle 19th century is recast as a trapeze stunt, the ringmaster roaring, Each single act of hers is laden with risk. We follow Monts and her reckless passions thru palaces and theaters, backstages and boudoirs, but our sight remains partly obscured behind veils, scrims, stained glass, curtains. Its an Ophuls trademark, making the fans aware the really act of observing is always compromised and composed of melodramatic cunning. Ultimately , in 2008, the film received a much-needed facelift and restoration, presented here on this 2 disc set. What we see now is as near as well get to Ophuls original version of what his storyteller deems the most marvelous act of the century. Names like Jamie Jungers, Rielle Hunter and Daisy Wright have vanished from our gossip pages, but the name of Lola Monts, and our last glance of her among the wild beasts, will remain in the light.