Being German I was especially impressed by the passage set in Bavaria, because at that point it became obvious to me that it was not just Lola's story Ophüls was telling but he sort of identified with her.There is this storyline when the king and Lola are still focusing on art while the self-righteous revolution is breaking out, and though I did not know at the time, I realised that it must have been the same for Ophüls when he was a director in Germany and the Nazis were gaining power. The king's longing look out of the window at all that was lost haunted me. Then there is this scene where Lola gets saved by the students, fleeing Munich in the middle of the night, just like Ophüls left Berlin at the last moment. When I was at the Parc de Bercy in Paris to watch the restored version, I sensed the great silence in the audience. Maybe like me they were thinking of all these people, who had not been so lucky.I'm so sorry that this masterpiece was not regarded as such when it was first released and even more at the fact that it was butchered subsequently. Sorry also that Ophüls himself witnessed this, but yet again grateful for the effort displayed in restoring it to its original beauty.

"Lola Montes" is a film about movement in every way. The famous tracking shots, so widely written about, are absolutely necessary here and in Max Ophuls' direction reached an apogee. They dominate such different story lines as "Le plaisir", "Madame De...", "Liebelei" and the rest but here the subject is motion - a life in perpetual, ceaseless motion. Actually this motive was appealing to Ophuls in general - lost earrings, the dance of the masked man and down the line -but here it uses a life as its opening premise. Actually the film is not really concerned with the title character as with the men whose lives it touches. In that capacity Martine Carol fulfills her role quite adequately. There's not much to see in Lola - she is portrayed in two dimensions throughout the film and her character was never intended to come to life. The men around her, on the other hand, are a wonderful lot with totally different responses to Lola's seductiveness and this is at the core of the film. The colors of the circus are fabulous and the season's of Lola's life depicted in some of the most sophisticated color schemes I've ever encountered. The wintry blues and whites in the palace with the snow depict the end of one man's life while the autumnal shades of her affair with Liszt were breath-taking. Someone reported that Phuls had actually painted the ground around the carriage to simulate the end of an affair. My only objection in the entire film is George Auric's overuse of his beautiful opening music at the film's beginning. It outlasted its welcome, unfortunately. This is a great film and fitting end to a remarkable career by yet another - Max Ophuls.Curtis Stotlar

If a film were purely spectacle and music, I would give this a 10. Unfortunately, the lack of charisma of the principle actress makes it hard to sit through. It is a series of vignettes offered to attendees of a circus where Miss Montes answers questions for a quarter and lets her hand be kissed for a dollar (the French exchange rate comes into play, of course). The movie is nice to look at with rich colors and interesting circus scenes. I wonder if the film has been worked on because it literally glows. It's the self importance of Carol and the tiresome people who seem to bring it down a bit. I never felt sympathy for her character; her arbitrariness just lost me. Franz Liszt looks like the second place winner in a Fabio look-alike contest. Then we are to feel great sorrow for her because she needs to stay in a dormitory for a short time on an ocean voyage. Because she feels slighted, she begins to get this crust about her and begin to use people. She is a courtesan in the true sense. Carol just doesn't work. Now Marlene Dietrich. There you go. Ophuls is interesting and this was his last film. It's certainly eye candy.

This movie is proof that the French, too, can make movies that are big budget spectacles that are dull and uninvolving. Like Around the World in 80 Days, The English Patient and The Last Emperor, this movie is BIG--bigger than life. And, like these other examples, sterile and uninteresting. It isn't that it's a bad movie---it certainly isn't. It's just with all the money and effort, it should have been better. As far as the style of the film, alternating from the circus to flashbacks, it sure reminded me of Max Ophüls' other film, Le Ronde. However, unlike Le Ronde, it lacked charm and style--it instead had a lavish budget and plastic characters. Plus, although the actress playing Lola was not completely unattractive, I had a very hard time imagining men falling for her.