Moving Pictures: The European Films of Max Ophüls

Again and again during Ophüls's career, he structured films around the flashbacks of a ruined woman. This early example is arguably the most powerful of them all. Blessed and cursed by beauty, a suicidal actress relives her meteoric rise from poverty to stardom. Stunning set pieces create the perfect backdrop for Isa Miranda’s performance, once called “one of the iconographical landmarks of the 1930s.” In Italian with English subtitles. (Italy, 1934, 35mm, b/w, 97 min.)