This overblown romance prefigures such Hollywood melodramas as WRITTEN ON THE WIND, but, like Douglas Sirk's tale of life among the oil aristocracy, is redeemed by technique, in this case Ophuls' spirited use of moving camera.
Everyone in the cast chews the curtains with appetite, particularly Isa Miranda as Gaby, the neurasthenic movie star who, following one of her many collapses in the course of the film, re-experiences the key event of her life, an unhappy love affair with married magnate Leonardo which led to the accidental death of his invalid wife, and Gaby's subsequent guilty breakdown.
Nobody tracked or craned the camera with more flair than Ophuls, and he uses both techniques expertly in this film, often, it seems, for no motive more weighty than simple glee at his expertise. An insignificant conversation between Gaby in a rowboat on a sun-lit lake and Leonardo driving his convertible along the bank is elaborately staged as two long tracking shots, with Ophuls intercutting between them.
Similar flair marks the death of wheelchair-bound Alma, her shadow racing ahead of her along the floor as she pushes her chair to the head of the stairs, then teeters and falls. Other sequences are too spasmodic, in particular those at the film studio, with Gaby's cliché cigar-chewing agent negotiating a new contract with the equally stock studio head, and,later, Leonardo facing a hostile board that attacks him for neglect of the company.
Miranda is at her febrile worst in this film, and it demands considerable suspension of disbelief to accept as her married lover the overweight and stolid Memo Benassi, whose primary acting technique is to stare into the middle distance and fire up another cigarette. But any enthusiast for Ophuls' fluid camera will find the film a delight.
Everyone in the cast chews the curtains with appetite, particularly Isa Miranda as Gaby, the neurasthenic movie star who, following one of her many collapses in the course of the film, re-experiences the key event of her life, an unhappy love affair with married magnate Leonardo which led to the accidental death of his invalid wife, and Gaby's subsequent guilty breakdown.
Nobody tracked or craned the camera with more flair than Ophuls, and he uses both techniques expertly in this film, often, it seems, for no motive more weighty than simple glee at his expertise. An insignificant conversation between Gaby in a rowboat on a sun-lit lake and Leonardo driving his convertible along the bank is elaborately staged as two long tracking shots, with Ophuls intercutting between them.
Similar flair marks the death of wheelchair-bound Alma, her shadow racing ahead of her along the floor as she pushes her chair to the head of the stairs, then teeters and falls. Other sequences are too spasmodic, in particular those at the film studio, with Gaby's cliché cigar-chewing agent negotiating a new contract with the equally stock studio head, and,later, Leonardo facing a hostile board that attacks him for neglect of the company.
Miranda is at her febrile worst in this film, and it demands considerable suspension of disbelief to accept as her married lover the overweight and stolid Memo Benassi, whose primary acting technique is to stare into the middle distance and fire up another cigarette. But any enthusiast for Ophuls' fluid camera will find the film a delight.