Mysterious Dude
10-19-2008, 03:45 AM
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La Ronde has a Brechtian narrator (Anton Walbrook) who introduces ten different stories in which two characters will meet. All of the stories end more or less the same, with the door closing or the lights going out. Some of the stories are long (fifteen minutes or so). Others are much shorter. They seem to get shorter towards the end of the film, as the characters have less patience for foreplay. In any case, after each story, one of the two characters is abandoned by the narrator, while the other one is followed into the next story, where he or she will have sex with a different person, and so forth.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but Philosophe_rouge recommended me a lot of girly, girly movies. At least they appeared that way to me. Ophuls also seems focused on the female characters. I believe, to be the best possible human being I can be, I should try to identify with women and to understand women, but quite simply, I have never been able to find films about women as interesting as films about men. That is a little reductive of my taste, for certainly I have films about women among my favorites, but they’re generally not very sexy roles (A Woman Under the Influence, Testament, The Miracle Worker, Broken Blossoms). I guess I’m just not a romantic.
Not that La Ronde is a film about romance. It is a film about sex. The narrator mentions love a few times, but is there any love here? After all, none of the characters are faithful to each other. Could any of them possibly love each other? I don’t know, and it’s probably not a very interesting question. At least, not to me. I suppose I should be impressed by the film’s frankness in depicting sex, compared to other films at the time, but such things have never interested me very much. I like to think that I’m interested in a variety of different subjects, but I have to admit, on many subjects, I am worthless, and I’m afraid this is one of them.
I admit I have been struggling to come up with things to say about this film. It’s not a bad film. It’s a good film, even. I enjoyed it. Ultimately, however, the film feels rather slight to me. I don’t find the format of ten-films-in-one to be very helpful, since it prevents us from getting to know the characters very well. And although I kind of like the narrator, while his speaking to the camera is supposed to create a more intimate relationship between himself and the audience, it also serves to emphasize how distant all the other characters are from the audience, being, as they are, unaware of the camera.
I had seen two Max Ophuls films before this one -- Madame de... and Lola Montes. I liked Madame de and didn’t care for Lola Montes, though I don’t know that I could persuasively justify the different reactions I had. Ophuls seems concerned with subjects that I consider fairly mundane, and none of his films has really clicked with me on a personal level.
**½/****
An interesting side note: The author of the play this film was based on is also the author of the novel that Eyes Wide Shut was based on.
La Ronde has a Brechtian narrator (Anton Walbrook) who introduces ten different stories in which two characters will meet. All of the stories end more or less the same, with the door closing or the lights going out. Some of the stories are long (fifteen minutes or so). Others are much shorter. They seem to get shorter towards the end of the film, as the characters have less patience for foreplay. In any case, after each story, one of the two characters is abandoned by the narrator, while the other one is followed into the next story, where he or she will have sex with a different person, and so forth.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but Philosophe_rouge recommended me a lot of girly, girly movies. At least they appeared that way to me. Ophuls also seems focused on the female characters. I believe, to be the best possible human being I can be, I should try to identify with women and to understand women, but quite simply, I have never been able to find films about women as interesting as films about men. That is a little reductive of my taste, for certainly I have films about women among my favorites, but they’re generally not very sexy roles (A Woman Under the Influence, Testament, The Miracle Worker, Broken Blossoms). I guess I’m just not a romantic.
Not that La Ronde is a film about romance. It is a film about sex. The narrator mentions love a few times, but is there any love here? After all, none of the characters are faithful to each other. Could any of them possibly love each other? I don’t know, and it’s probably not a very interesting question. At least, not to me. I suppose I should be impressed by the film’s frankness in depicting sex, compared to other films at the time, but such things have never interested me very much. I like to think that I’m interested in a variety of different subjects, but I have to admit, on many subjects, I am worthless, and I’m afraid this is one of them.
I admit I have been struggling to come up with things to say about this film. It’s not a bad film. It’s a good film, even. I enjoyed it. Ultimately, however, the film feels rather slight to me. I don’t find the format of ten-films-in-one to be very helpful, since it prevents us from getting to know the characters very well. And although I kind of like the narrator, while his speaking to the camera is supposed to create a more intimate relationship between himself and the audience, it also serves to emphasize how distant all the other characters are from the audience, being, as they are, unaware of the camera.
I had seen two Max Ophuls films before this one -- Madame de... and Lola Montes. I liked Madame de and didn’t care for Lola Montes, though I don’t know that I could persuasively justify the different reactions I had. Ophuls seems concerned with subjects that I consider fairly mundane, and none of his films has really clicked with me on a personal level.
**½/****
An interesting side note: The author of the play this film was based on is also the author of the novel that Eyes Wide Shut was based on.