Cinema history is littered with expensive train wrecks, but few were as spectacular as what happened to Max Ophüls in 1955. He walked into a Paris premiere with the most expensive European film ever made. He walked out to a riot.
People weren't just bored. They were angry. They threw things. They felt cheated by a movie that took a "bombshell" actress, Martine Carol, and turned her into a silent, tragic mannequin trapped in a surreal circus. The producers, panicking over their empty bank accounts, didn't wait long. They snatched the film away, chopped it up, and tried to turn a non-linear masterpiece into a standard, boring biography.
It failed anyway.
For decades, Lola Montès was a ghost. A "mutilated" legend. But then something shifted. The French New Wave kids—Truffaut and Godard—started shouting from the rooftops that this was the greatest film ever made. Not just a good movie, but the movie. By the time it was fully restored in 2008, the world finally caught up to what Ophüls was doing. He wasn't making a biopic. He was predicting the future of celebrity culture.
The Circus of Public Consumption
The structure is honestly weird for 1955. Instead of starting with Lola's birth, we start with her at the end. She’s a "fallen woman," a former mistress to kings and composers, now reduced to a sideshow act in a New Orleans circus. Peter Ustinov plays the Ringmaster, a guy who basically functions as a meta-director. He’s selling tickets to her scandals.
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Every night, Lola has to answer invasive questions from a leering crowd.
"How many lovers did you have?"
"Was the King good in bed?"
It’s gross. It's humiliating. And Ophüls makes sure you feel like you’re part of that crowd.
The movie jumps back and forth. We see her affair with Franz Liszt, where they travel in a carriage that feels like a gilded prison. We see her time in Bavaria with King Ludwig I, a deaf, lonely man played with heartbreaking stillness by Anton Walbrook. But we always come back to that circus. The colors are aggressive. Gold, deep reds, and blinding blues. Ophüls used the new CinemaScope format—which most directors used for flat, wide landscapes—and crammed it with detail. He put curtains, chandeliers, and bars in front of the camera. You're always peeking through something. You're a voyeur.
Why Everyone Hated it (At First)
You have to understand who Martine Carol was. In the 50s, she was the French Marilyn Monroe. People went to see her to see a sex symbol. Instead, Ophüls gave them a woman who looks exhausted. She’s passive. She barely speaks.
Critics at the time called her performance "wooden." They missed the point.
Lola is a woman who has been looked at so much she has become an object. She’s a statue. When she’s in the circus, she’s literally being lowered from the ceiling like a piece of equipment. The audience in 1955 wanted a spicy romance; Ophüls gave them a cold, intellectual autopsy of fame.
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Breaking the Widescreen Rules
Technically speaking, Lola Montès is a monster. Most directors in the mid-50s were terrified of CinemaScope. They thought it was "only for snakes and funerals." They didn't know where to put the camera.
Ophüls didn't care.
- Verticality in a Horizontal World: He used shadows and pillars to "mask" the edges of the screen, creating smaller frames within the big one.
- The Moving Camera: His trademark tracking shots are here, but they’re more complex. The camera doesn't just follow the actors; it dances around them, circling the circus ring until you feel dizzy.
- Color as Emotion: To get a specific "autumnal" look for the Liszt sequence, Ophüls supposedly had kilometers of netting hung over trees and had the roads painted reddish-brown every morning. This wasn't realism. It was "chromatic abuse," as some critics joked. It was pure artifice.
The Tragic Swan Song
Max Ophüls died in 1957, just two years after the film's disastrous launch. He died believing his greatest work was a failure. He never saw the 1968 restoration, and he certainly never saw the 2008 digital masterpiece that now sits in the Criterion Collection.
There's a specific kind of sadness in that. The film is about a woman whose life is no longer her own, and for fifty years, the film itself was treated the same way—cut, sold, and displayed in ways the creator never intended.
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Honestly, the movie is a "cream cake," as some say—rich, dense, and maybe a bit much to stomach in one sitting. But it’s also a warning. Long before Instagram or reality TV, Ophüls saw that we would eventually turn people’s private tragedies into public entertainment. He saw the "cancel culture" and the "paparazzi" coming a mile away.
How to Actually Watch It
If you’re going to watch Lola Montès, don’t expect a fast-paced thriller. It’s a slow burn.
- Get the 2008 Restoration: Don't touch any older versions. The color and sound are vital.
- Focus on the Background: Look at how many "layers" are in each shot. There’s almost always something moving in the distance or the foreground.
- Watch the Ringmaster: Peter Ustinov’s character is the most important guy in the movie. He represents us—the audience that demands to see the "scandal" even if it kills the performer.
The final shot is one of the most famous in cinema history. A long, slow line of men waiting to pay one dollar to kiss Lola’s hand. She sits in a cage. They move toward her like a factory line. It's the ultimate image of a woman consumed by her own celebrity.
If you want to understand modern movies—from Wes Anderson’s symmetrical sets to the tracking shots in Goodfellas—you have to see where it started. You have to see the mess Ophüls made in 1955.
Next Steps for Cinephiles:
To truly appreciate the "Ophülsian" style before jumping into his final epic, watch The Earrings of Madame de... (1953). It’s a more traditional narrative that uses the same fluid camera work but with a much more emotional, accessible heart. Once you see how he handles a "perfect" movie, you'll understand why he chose to break everything apart for Lola Montès.