Letter from an Unknown Woman

It all starts from a schoolgirl crush.Louis Jourdan (b. 1919) is Stefan Brand, a concert pianist, who's leaving Vienna to avoid a duel.Before he leaves his servant gives him a letter from an unknown woman.The letter is from Lisa Berndl, played by Joan Fontaine (b. 1917).In that letter Lisa tells how deeply in love she's been with Stefan for many years.It all started when she was living as his neighbor as a schoolgirl.Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) is a movie that Max Ophüls directed.I started watching the movie after about five minutes and I was too captivated by it so I couldn't stop watching it.It's a different kind of love story.Fontaine and Jourdan are perfect people for their parts.Joan Fontaine is amazing going from a teenager to a mature woman.The whole movie has a great casting.This movie is a true classic.A movie that will make you shed a few tears.

All of Ophulus films are remarkable achievements of content and form, but, this film is certainly his greatest contribution to cinema in the USA, and arguably his greatest film of any period. It is the intoxicatingly bittersweet tale of the obsessive love a young girl (Joan Fontaine) develops for a rougish pianist (Louis Jordan) that remains throughout each charcters life, long after most school-girl crushes have faded away. Fontaine charcter is so convincingly and sympathetically drawn that we are pulled into her desire for this rather self-possessed artist against our own rational thoughts. And as the film progresses Fontaine's attraction to the artist begins to deepen and humanize the audiences response to him. This film is deeply concerned with a woman's role under patriarchy and the limitations of "romantic" love as a form of fulfillment. It is also a well thought out examination of the idea of the "artistic" life as offering the possibilities of either liberation or entrapment.

This has to be one of my all time favorite films. Ophuls is perhaps the most graceful and elegant film-maker ever. Here in Letter from an Unknown Woman, he is at his most romantic. Though the romance is only a fantasy (and so beautifully subverted by Ophuls graceful choreography and merciless sense of irony), passion is nevertheless king (or queen). I have never seen a film celebrate love in quite this way. It reminds me of one of the most beautiful lines in cinema from Altman's "Gosford Park" when Sophie Thompson says, "I believe in love. Not just getting it... giving it. I think as long as you can love somebody, whether or not they love you, then it's worth it." Ophuls' entire film plays with this very notion. Lise's fanatical love (and obsession) is requited not by Stefan but by Ophuls himself, and of course by weepy viewers like me and hopefully you too.