Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Calificación de los usuarios:

7.9/10   

Director:

Max Ophüls

Escritores:

Howard Koch (screenplay)
Stefan Zweig (story)

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

13 septiembre 1948 (Sweden)

Género:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

In Vienna, about 1900, a dashing man arrives at his flat, instructing his manservant that he will leave before morning: the man is Stefan Brand...

Plot Keywords:

Letter | Duel | Pianist | Apartment | Platonic Love

Premios:

1 win

Comentarios de los usuarios:

Vienna at its most romantic.

Reparto

Joan Fontaine	...	Lisa Berndle
Louis Jourdan	...	Stefan Brand
Mady Christians	...	Frau Berndle
Marcel Journet	...	Johann Stauffer
Art Smith	...	John
Carol Yorke	...	Marie
Howard Freeman	...	Herr Kastner
John Good	...	Lt. Leopold von Kaltnegger
Leo B. Pessin	...	Stefan Jr.
Erskine Sanford	...	Porter
Otto Waldis	...	Concierge
Sonja Bryden	...	Frau Spitzer

También conocida como:

Carta de una desconocida (Spain) [es]

Duración:

86 min

País:

USA

Idioma:

Inglés

Color:

Negro y Blanco

Relación de Aspecto:

1.37 : 1

Sonido:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Clasificación:

USA:Approved (MPAA rating: #12855) | UK:U | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:Btl

Compañía:

Rampart Productions (I)

Trivialidades:

Joan Fontaine's favorite movie.

Citas:

Lisa Berndl: The course of our lives can be changed by such little things. So many passing by, each intent on his own problems. So many faces that one might easily have been lost. I know now that nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured; every step is counted.

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in La science des rêves (2006)

Banda de Sonido:

Un sospiro

Vienna at its most romantic.

An admirable scene sums up the whole movie:Stefan and Liza are aboard a "train" and they "travel".It's actually a fixed train,and some kind of stagehand forwards a chocolate box scenery :Venice ,Switzerland... In the real world ,trains are ominous messengers of death and despair:it's a train which takes Stefan away after their affair,a train which takes the young boy to his death.

Stefan (Jourdan)lives his selfish life without seeing anything.Ophuls(spelled Opuls in the cast and credits) shows him as a handsome nice young man,but if you look with care,you'll notice it's always Liza(Fontaine)who's looking at him with love.Jourdan seems to care but actually he knows so many women that he acts as if he's in a play:Liza's admiration means nothing to him who is a ladykiller-see the scene when Liza comes back from the station- and a celebrated musician adulated by the crowds.Liza is the romantic woman,with a zest of touch of Madame Bovary thrown in -it's not a coincidence if Minnelli chose Jourdan as Madame Bovary's lover in his eponymous movie the very same year-For her,there must be only one love ,and she's prepared to give it all.

Joan Fontaine had perhaps never been so good as here.Her whole life ,as she writes her letter (the movie is a flashback ) could have been written in the past conditional.Main influence is certainly that of John Stahl and his "only yesterday" (1933)in which Margaret Sullavan wrote John Boles such a letter.Even the young boy is present in both movies.The last page of the letter,ink-stained (or tear-stained?)takes the audience to a peak of emotion.The final predates the ending of Ophuls's "Madame de" (1953),and the scene on the "train" ,an imitation of life ,the big circus of "Lola Montes" (1955)

This is probably Louis Jourdan's best part as well.A French actor,he was never that much popular in his native country ,and he found his best parts in the US ,be it artistically (Ophuls ,Hitchcock and Minnelli) or commercially (Octopussy) speaking.