by Mike Norton
In early twentieth century Vienna, a washed up concert pianist, Stefan Brand (Louis Jordan), emerges from the rain soaked streets into his apartment, after confirming a duel the next morning that would undoubtedly end in his death, to find a letter waiting for him. The first lines of the letter, read in voiceover by Joan Fontaine, state simply and grimly- “By the time you read this letter, I may already be dead”. Fontaine plays the titular woman sending the letter, Lisa, and her narration sets in motion the main plot of the film, told in flashback from Lisa’s point of view. What follows is an epic melodrama bursting at the seams with emotion, expressed evocatively by director Max Ophüls’ camera poetry and the complex screenplay from Howard Koch, based off the novella of the same name written by Stefan Zweig. It is one of the most acutely and devastatingly felt American romantic films of all time.
We first meet Lisa as a teenager in Vienna when a dashing new tenant moves into her apartment complex. It’s Stefan Brand, a successful and talented concert pianist, and Lisa quickly becomes entranced by the man, despite never coming into direct contact with him. She listens yearningly to his playing of the piano, which she describes in her voice over as the “happiest hours of my life”. If melodrama is a genre based on bottled up emotion, than Lisa represents the perfect melodrama heroine. Her passion for Stefan starts off innocently enough, but when her family moves to Lintz and sets her up to marry a sweet, if dull, Army Lieutenant, she flees back to Vienna to be with the man who she truly loves, even if he still doesn’t know she exists.
Stefan’s acknowledgement, or lack thereof, of Lisa’s love for him becomes the main tragedy of the film. When they finally meet, Brand becomes fascinated by Lisa, who likewise is fascinated by Brand. The dialogue between them is brimming with deeper meaning and foreshadowing, a testament to the brilliance of Koch’s screenplay. Take this fairly banal exchange outside a glass display of wax models-
Lisa: For instance. I don’t know if one day, they’ll make a wax figure of you and put you in there because you’ll be so famous.
Stefan: Well, if they do, will you pay your penny to come in and see me?
Lisa: If you’ll come alive.
The irony of these lines becomes evident by the film’s end, when Lisa dies without Stefan’s knowledge of her. The wax model is something of a metaphor for the imagined perfection we build in our heads of people. Indeed, Letter from an Unknown Woman is about blissful artifice, how the reality is often disappointing and downright depressing when compared to the want, or the imagined. In one of the most memorable scenes of the film, Lisa and Stefan ride a cyclorama ride with a painted canvas rolling past them depicting fantasy worlds that isolate the couple from real life. Real trains in this film are cruel messengers of fate- in one instance, Lisa says goodbye to Stefan as he boards a train, promising to return to her in two weeks when in reality it’s the last true moment they’ll share together, and in another, Lisa says goodbye to her son as he boards a train, the last she will see of him as he dies of typhus that spreads through the passengers on the train. Ophüls suffocates the viewer with intense close ups of Fontaine’s longing face in both instances, and Fontaine carries these shots, infusing them with sincere, believable longing.
Ophüls does indeed call attention to the film’s own artifice, making this film the perfect marriage of style and content. He brings his European flair to the material, influenced by German expressionists, especially F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, utilizing languid tracking shots that pick up the characters as they move through their environment, and slow zooms and long takes that create a fluid pace. Had the film been shot in a straightforward way, the effect would be lost. This is a theatrically based melodrama that is also distinctly cinematic thanks to the emphasis on camera placement and movement. Cinematographer Franz Planer renders Vienna and the other settings of the film poetically, from the somehow warmly snowy streets in which Stefan and Lisa walk when they first meet, to the slick, rainy streets Stefan occupies later in the film, and the exceedingly sunny setting of Lintz which perhaps suggests a false feeling of security for Lisa that she desperately wants to break by returning to Vienna. The score, by Daniele Amfitheatrof, is simply one of the most effective in film history.
The intricate plot of the film picks up after Stefan leaves Lisa years later, now that Lisa has, unknown to Stefan, fathered Stefan’s child and married a well off man named Johann (Howard Freeman) who knows about her past love for Stefan (this is the man Stefan will duel as alluded to in the beginning of the film). Stefan’s re-introduction to the film brings the tragedy full circle. In the most emotionally painful scenes in the film, Lisa gives up everything by appearing in Stefan’s apartment after meeting him at an opera. Stefan is now older and lonelier, failed in his career as a pianist and in his quest to find what he thinks is the perfect girl. It’s here where the theme of memory enters the film, since Stefan tragically doesn’t remember Lisa despite Lisa’s unconditional devotion to Stefan. In this way, Letter from an Unknown Woman anticipates Vertigo, which also utilized the tragic theme of memory, but in an inverse way, as James Stewart’s Scottie tries to re-create his past love by literally creating a new woman. In a more superficial way, Vertigo, like Letter, takes somewhat sappy material and, thanks to bold artistic choices by its director and intensely romantic music (Scene D’Amour, anyone?) elevates it to best-of-all-time status.
Letter from an Unknown Woman is chock full of poignant images that stand out in the viewer’s head long after the final credits roll. One of these is towards the end of the film, when Stefan has finished reading the letter from Lisa and is now embarking on the duel that he will most certainly lose. Outside his apartment complex, he sees a ghost image of the teenage Lisa standing innocently by his door. This imagery recalls the ghosts of the city girl that torment the protagonist of F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise. In Letter, though, the imagery evokes not feelings of temptation but of sadness and nostalgia. It makes Stefan’s suicide mission (which is not depicted on screen) seem almost noble, the least he could do for wrecking this woman’s life, bringing the film to a satisfactory, if bittersweet, conclusion.
Ophüls does indeed call attention to the film’s own artifice, making this film the perfect marriage of style and content. He brings his European flair to the material, influenced by German expressionists, especially F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, utilizing languid tracking shots that pick up the characters as they move through their environment, and slow zooms and long takes that create a fluid pace.
A wholly magnificent review of a screen classic, and more than a worthy follow-up of last week’s smashing debut Mike! Needless to say but I’ll say it anyway this quintessential romantic film is lush, elegant, atmospheric and heartbreaking, and contains the trademark pans of its iconic creator. It contains the fate symbols we have seen in the director’s other works, and it leaves a lasting impression. Yes, the perfect score by Amfitheatrof is unforgettable and as you note there are some compelling visual parallels to both VERTIGO and SUNRISE. The film features what may well be Joan Fontaine’s greatest performance, and it oozes with poetry. It’s not nearly enough to say that it is Ophuls’ finest American film. rather it vies for the greatest romantic film ever made with Lean’s BRIEF ENCOUNTER.
Mike, you have simply outdone yourself!
Thank you Sam! This film is definitely one of the greatest of all time.. I have not seen BRIEF ENCOUNTER yet, but I think I am a bit of a sucker for romantic melodramas from this time period so I will most likely enjoy it. Unfortunately, LETTER is somewhat under seen (perhaps this accounts for the lower number of comments here?) but I predict its stature will continue to rise with the coming years. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Criterion edition somewhere down the line. This film is a candidate for my top ten of all time.
Well done, Mike!
Yours is a very perceptive and well-structured homage to a highlight of a great filmmaker’s work. To me, Ophuls is a distinguished pioneer of and second to none in attending to a rip-tide leaving in tatters intimations of a heroic destiny. Your remarks on melodrama as pertaining to cinema touch upon this phenomenon very well.
I really like the way you see Vertigo in this.
Thanks Jim! This is the only Ophuls I have seen, and perhaps patterns such as the one you mention will become clearer to me as I make my way though his work. There was an essay on this film in Senses of Cinema that explores the cinematic merits of melodrama in this film much more in depth than I do here. Like I said to Sam, I’m a sucker for this sort of thing, especially when (maybe only when) the craftsmanship is at the level it is here. Another film that I see similarities to is DAYS OF BEING WILD, which also uses passing time and fate as tragic themes, and also meditates on missed connections/isolation.
Another brilliant analysis of a key film! Keep it up!
Thanks Dean! This is a key film, and it should be mandatory viewing as far as I’m concerned.
One of the most poetic of films. Superbly-written review that hits upon all the vital points.
Indeed Frank, this is one of the most poetic, emotionally charged films of all time, right up there with SUNRISE. Thanks for the comment!
My favorite Ophuls film. Like you, I’m moved by the fact that Fontane is our protagnoist and yet she is so poignantly incidental to the character she is devoted to…at least until he reads that letter.
[…] If anything positive can come out of the passing of Joan Fontaine this year, perhaps it will be an increased recognition of this film, in which she delivers one of the greatest performances in the Classic Hollywood era, and one of the best of all time period. The film wasn’t even available on Netflix last time I checked- luckily I was able to catch it on TCM earlier in the year when they ran a Fontaine retrospective. She plays a girl obsessively in love with a concert pianist who barely acknowledges her existence. The plot from there is pure melodrama, but crushing nonetheless, as rendered by director Max Ophuls’s evocative style. A devastating film that creates artifice and shatters it, brimming with metaphors and just missed emotional connections. Hopefully Criterion will release the film as it is more than worthy of their top of the line treatment. Read my full essay on it here. […]