Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
Director: Max Ophüls
Starring: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan
Honors:
This picture about a life long romantic infatuation marred
with heartbreak and anguish would be the perhaps the finest work of a director
Max Ophüls during his short period in Hollywood. It stars Joan Fontaine in what
she considered her favorite film which happened to be produced by her new
independent production company. The film plays with the mentality of what-ifs
while harkening to feelings of young love and the deep seeded memories that
some hold on to later in life played within an early 20th century
period piece. The film for its time was well received, but would discover a growing
favor with the cinematic community through the decades.
Letter from an Unknown
Woman is a romantic drama about a woman’s life that is influenced by her
romantic infatuation to a man that barely remembers her, affecting the outcomes
in her life. In Vienna at the turn of the 20th century a teenage
girl named Lisa (Joan Fontaine) begins an infatuation with a handsome new
neighbor Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), an up and coming concert pianist dedicated
to his craft to be a success. Lisa is forced to move away. But as she matures
into a young lady she is still drawn back to Vienna and her fixation towards Stefan.
Her dream appears to come true as she wins the attention of Stefan, now a famed
musician, as they share a brief romantic affair, but is short lived by his
career, making her one of many women he had loved and quickly forgotten through
the years. However Lisa would bare the result of a son, but without Stefan attempts
get on with life marrying a wealthy
older gentleman, Johann (Marcel Journet), but her love for Stefan would
continue to affect her.
Years later Stefan, long since given up his fame, and Lisa have their paths cross again and once again are
draw together, to the despise of Johann. When it becomes clear that Stefan
never truly loved Lisa, not even able to remember her name, she cannot go
through with the new affair, despite her yearning to be with him again. Their
son, whom Lisa never revealed to Stefan, would die of typhus never knowing of his
real father with Lisa contracting it shortly after, spurring her to write a
lengthy letter to Stefan detailing her life story moments before passing. The plot
point of the letter bookends the picture as Stefan realizes who Lisa was and
how he affected her, taking responsibility for his actions by accepting the
invitation to a duel with Johann, the man that actually loved Lisa.
This picture has a bit of a love/hate feeling with it. I can
appreciate the idea of young love, or in this case I would refer to it as
infatuation, because how can she love someone she really never knew intimately.
I find the story to be troubling for Lisa to go nearly her entire life pinning
for this man who used her for essentially a one night stand. For what amounts
to sad tale of hurt and heartbreak for romance that never was or could be, it
is set to the tone of a period piece, nearly 50 years prior to its release in a
romanticized European setting that was sure to attract its fair share of
viewers. Most of what can be appreciated within the picture form a cinematic
point of view is the production quality of this feature, being feasibly the
finest Hollywood production of German born director Max Ophüls in only his
second American movie. The picture is visually interesting, utilizing space and
dimension rather well for a dramatic love story that generally does not move
quickly. Each shot has purpose and is executed soundly for the best effect at
sharing the film’s emotion.
Max Ophüls had fled Europe in the face of Nazi Germany,
first from his homeland to France, and then to the United States following the fall
of France and for many years remained inactive from his craft in his new home. He
would once again take up post behind camera following the end of the war,
finding work at Universal. Inspired by the novella of the same name Letter from an Unknown Woman had its
story padded allowing it to be more appealing for the screen, scraping the idea
of Stefan as a writer for a musician and fleshing out Lisa’s story, whose
character was unnamed through the novella.
The film lacks the European qualities one might think would
have come from a man that worked most of career in Germany and France. Yet the
production smacks of Hollywood quality, after all the entire cast and crew was
of the Hollywood ilk, but Ophüls’ influence can be seen in how he uses the
camera to subtly move and explore the spaces, making the picture feel more
intimate than the usual soundstage and backlot shot picture.
In reality the picture is a Joan Fontaine effort. The 30
year old little sister of acclaimed Olivia de Havilland had made a name for
herself figuratively and in reality as she shed her de Havilland name for her
mother’s maiden name earning herself an equal amount of Academy Award nominations
and wins as her sister did at this point, her win coming against her sister for
1941’s Suspicion. Freed from studios
she was able to make the features that she personally backed under her
production company, Rampart. Her performance playing a character from teenager
into adulthood as a pained mother and hopeless romantic is rather convincing.
Her teenage persona is plain and very innocent and as she ages she becomes
slower, direct, and far more thoughtful, manifesting genuine attention and
skill going into her performance. For Fontaine, she considered the role of Lisa
as her favorite performance, and Letter
from an Unknown Woman her favorite picture she acted in.
Playing Fontaine’s older lover was in fact an actor three
and half years her junior. Louis Jourdan was a French born actor who found
trouble in American cinema after being signed to David O. Selznick as Jourdan
voiced hi unwillingness to take many roles offered him causing professional
issues. Lent out for this picture Jourdan’s European qualities easily allow him
to slide into his role, but surprisingly does feel too different from what any
other American actor would have provided for this role as the musician, riding
various stages of a career. He seems to take a chapter out of Fontaine’s acting
style allowing the audience to experience the physical and emotional draining
of a character as he ages. Visually not much actually changes other than a pair
of silver streaks applied to hair on his temples, but with his aging he slows
down the energy of his performance, becoming more and more of a man that has
seen a lot and done far more than the average man his character’s age, becoming
somewhat lost from the craft that once drove him.
The only member of the supporting cast to play a memorable
role in the film was Art Smith portraying John, the long serving mute butler of
Stefan. Being voiceless, his performance plays entirely on the stoic gazes and knowing
nods of affirmation as a trusted and hardworking servant for his employer and
friend. In a way he serves as the audience in the world of the picture, the
only one that truly recognizes Lisa as a character that enters Stefan’s life on
many brief occasions. His stoned faced and stoic character presents the emotion
of heartbreak beyond that felt by Lisa, providing Stefan with the clarity of
what he had done in his life to this poor girl. Perhaps any actor could have
played the part as John, but Smith’s brief moments are enough to get across the
message needed for role in the scheme of the plot.
Letter from an Unknown
Woman was generally well received during its time, but not as one of the
year’s best. However, with time the feature grew an admiration for it simple
rooted romantic drama, easily considered the finest American production of Max
Ophüls before he returned to French cinema. Admiration by those that discovered
the picture in the later twentieth century aided it to become in one of the
first films elected to the Nation Film Registry in 1992. Despite this honor the
feature does not seem to have stood up as highly as other features on this list
of highly regarded films. Letter from an
Unknown Woman remains a fine picture, but like many other films, it tends
to slowly fade in one’s mind.
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