Product Description

Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophuls's delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's controversial turn-of-thecentury play La ronde. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, and aristocrats, all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous as it is enchanting and shot with Ophuls's trademark intricate cinematography. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls, Interview with Max Ophuls's son, the Academy Award winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls
Interview with actor Daniel Gelin (Napoleon, Testament of Orpheus)
Interview with film scholar Alan Williams, Selected correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play
New and improved English subtitle translation. PLUS: A new essay by film critic Terrence Raffert

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45254 in DVD
• Brand: IMAGE ENT.
• Released on: 2008-09-16
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, HiFi Sound, Subtitled, Surround Sound, THX, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Features

• Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophuls's delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's controversial turn-of-thecentury play La ronde. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, and aristocrats, all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous a

Amazon.com essential video
The exquisite circularity of the roundelay has always been an attractive cinematic device, but never has it been used with more delicacy and canny insight than in La Ronde, Max Ophüls's adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play Reigen. The camera glides, swirls, and delicately dances around fleeting moments between lovers, from chance meetings and secret trysts, to the sincere but hopeless courtship by a besotted admirer, to the relaxed banter of cuckolding married couples. Ophüls's wry glimpses behind closed doors and pulled curtains are both cynical and sweet, generous of character but suspect of motive. As one scene ends, we waltz along as the characters change partners and dance again and again; we follow streetwalkers and soldiers, courtesans and counts, until we come full circle. Returning to the superb metaphor of the carousel, where dapper Anton Walbrook wanders about as host and commentator (a sort of literary ringmaster, like Peter Ustinov in Lola Montes), Ophüls plays at the game of love with a cocked grim and a sly jab, though he never belittles or judges. What could easily have descended into farce is lifted into loving satire by Ophüls's elegant touch and sparkling wit. A huge success in Europe, its continental attitude wasn't embraced by American audiences at the time. But it has come to be regarded one of Ophüls's finest and most beautifully visualized films. Everyone is somebody's fool, and isn't it wonderful? --Sean Axmaker

Review
Superb, stylized comedy. --Halliwell's

Review
Dazzling technical virtuosity and cinematic elegance. --Chicago Reader

Customer Reviews

A French Lesson in Infidelity.
It was a happy day when I first heard Criterion was finally releasing Max Ophüls' two great films, La Ronde and Earrings of Madame De. Ophüls is known for his brilliant tracking shots and elaborate camera movements (which influenced Stanley Kubrick). He is also known for his black-and-white French bedroom farce, La Ronde (1950), starring Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, and Gérard Philipe, based on Arthur Schnitzler's controversial 1897 play, Reigen. (Adolf Hitler considered Schnitzler's play obscene for its depiction of the sexual morals and class ideology of its day. Schnitzler, a doctor, recognized that syphilis was not limited to certain layers of Viennese society.) La Ronde ("The Roundabout") follows a series of stories about love affairs that end with one of the partners forming a new sexual liaison with another person. A soldier (Serge Reggiani) first meets a prostitute (Simone Signoret) and then has an affair with a young parlor maid, who then has sex with the young man of the house, who in turn has sex with a young wife, who then has sex with her husband, and so on until the film completes its circle with a Count (Gérard Philipe) having sex with the same prostitute. La Ronde is technically brilliant, the cinematography sparkles, and this is truly great cinema. Roger Ebert calls Ophüls' films "one of the great pleasures of the cinema."

The Criterion edition features a newly restored high-definition digital transfer; audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls; an interview with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, discussing his father's work; an interview with actor Daniel Gélin (Napoléon, Testament of Orpheus); an interview with film scholar Alan Williams; selected correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play; new subtitle translation; and a new essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty.

G. Merritt

A feast for the eyes
"La Ronde" succeeds on many levels. The screenplay, adapted from the play by Arthur Schnitzler, is witty and provocative. It has a lightness of touch and delicate irony that is peculiar to the French. The performances are excellent-especially Danielle Darrieux's portrayal of an adulterous wife. However, the real distinction of this movie is it's visual style. The black and white cinematography is anything but flat. There are layers and textures in this film that are a feast for the eyes. The sumptuous set decorations are beautifully ornate-almost baroque. "La Ronde" is replete with camera angles reminiscent of "Citizen Kane." There is a fantastic overhead shot of a young courtesan whose head is in the center of hanging light fixture-or chandelier. This aspect is that of a poet who is idealizing her. It is an absolutely brilliant moment. Ophuls has a wonderful sense of movement. The long tracking shots and circular motion complement, instead of detract from, the action and emotion of the story. Particularly dazzling are the carousel scenes where circles run counter to one another. One might say that the omnipresent narrator is rather intrusive, but he grows on you. He's French, after all......

A movie once seen you'll never forget it

A classic "round" of vignettes, each about love, each vignette blending into the next by means of a single character, like passing a baton in a foot race, until we're back at the beginning again. It begins with a young prostitute (played by Simone Signoret) meeting a soldier (Serge Reggiani) and ends, after about six vignettes, with a different soldier (Gerard Philipe) paying a visit to Signoret. All of it is held together by a raconteur, played superbly with just the right amount of sardonic wit by Anton Walbrook, who steals the picture.

Max Ophuls's production is very stylized, with rococo turn-of-the-century sets. It's light and witty, but insightful, too, with the emphasis on the fleeting aspects of love and the vanity and double standards held to by the male of the species. The movie has everything going for it: a brilliant idea, a wonderful script, great acting, and terrific camerawork. Movie-making at its finest. [It was banned in America for four years on obscenity charges: the women enjoy their illicit love affairs a little too much for the censors' tastes at the time. Finally they came to their senses - the censors, I mean.]