allyjack Review of Letter from an Unknown Woman

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Tragedy elevated into a romantic dream of fulfillment

[8/10 · 18 October 1999]

(WARNING - CONTAINS MILD SPOILER) The material is both tragic and borderline creepy in dramatizing Fontaine's lifelong obsession and helplessness (the scene where she comes back to give herself to Jourdan and realizes how his inane seductive chatter conveys the real pain of his failure to remember her is almost unbearably painful), but Ophuls elevates it into a romantic dream of fulfillment - she emphasizes how her life with their son has been full beyond measure despite his absence from it; when at the end he's in decline and likely attainable, it may be the seedy realism and immediacy (and the inevitable accompanying sacrifice of her fantasy) that drives her away as much as his callousness; even so, the near attainment of the dream can only coincide with death. The film's most charming sequences emphasize artifice and illusion (the mock train where they travel endlessly past backdrops of various countries), and Bennett's charming performance embodies the thesis that an image of perfection and bliss can transform from within, rendering the world an imperfect approximation by comparison.