Lola Montès (The Fall of Lola Montes) (The Sins of Lola Montes) (1955)
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 1,226
Movie Info
Max Ophuls' final film (and his only movie in color) is a cinematic tour-de-force masquerading as a biography, in this case a dazzling fictionalized life of the notorious 19th century dancer, actress, and courtesan. A still beautiful, but weary and disillusioned (and, as we later discover, ailing) Lola Montes (Martine Carol) is first seen as the featured attraction at a seedy American circus, appearing at the center of a series of various tableaux depicting the scandalous events for which she is
Dec 23, 1955 Wide
Feb 23, 1999
Rialto Pictures
Cast
-
Martine Carol
Lola Montes -
Peter Ustinov
Circus Master -
Anton Walbrook
Ludwig I King of Bavari... -
Oskar Werner
Student -
Ivan Desny
Lieutenant James -
Will Quadflieg
Franz Liszt -
Henri Guisol
Maurice -
Lise Delamare
Mrs. Craigie -
Germaine Delbat
Stewardess -
Friedrich Domin
Circus Manager -
Paulette Dubost
Josephine -
Carl Esmond
The Doctor -
Jean Galland
Private Secretary -
Héléna Manson
James' Sister -
-
Claude Pinoteau
Conductor Claudio Pirot... -
Werner Finck
Wisboeck -
Daniel Mendaille
Captain -
Willy Roesner
Minister
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All Critics (31) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (26) | Rotten (4) | DVD (7)
Watch Lola Montes and you may never watch a movie the same way again.
Lola Montes is mainly a triumph of vibrancy and metaphor. Nonetheless it's quite an experience.
Seen on a big screen, this is a movie to get drunk on.
Max Ophüls' 1955 masterpiece gets a superb restoration.
In some odd way, the huge production scale and marvelous widescreen color scheme make Lola Montès seem more distant and artificial than Ophüls' smaller-scale black-and-white films.
Some fetching period observation appears from time to time, but life is rarely breathed into this frilly opus.
"...lingers as a sensational fever dream."
The net result is pure Ophuls, his signature recognizable in nearly every scene and, despite its very poor initial reception, one hell of a movie.
as Lola, Martine Carol should compel our attention, but instead merely toys with it
Ophuls... contrasts the outrageous sensationalism of her reputation... with offstage moments of tender candor and poignant, poetic flashbacks
With all due respect to film critic Andrew Sarris, Max Ophüls' legendary Lola Montès is not 'the greatest film ever made.'
Ophüls' style co-stars, paralleling and reinforcing stage artificiality with tracking and crane and pan shots, fluidly tilting to emphasize romance as opposed to "reality."
A bodice-ripper invested with the profundity of a Stendhal novel, Lola Montes is also, even more than La Ronde, Ophüls's definite commentary on movie-watching.
One of the most beautiful films ever made.
The idea behind this biopic might be brilliant but I didn't see the film's magic onscreen.
Audience Reviews for Lola Montès (The Fall of Lola Montes) (The Sins of Lola Montes)
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Foreign Titles
- Lola Montez (DE)
- Lola Montez (1955) (UK)


Top Critic
Although it had moments of brilliance -, for the most part I found this flick very stilted and lacking the usual Ophuls' grace and charm. Some high hopes dashed.
Update 2009 - OK I saw the latest restoration on a big screen - and the net gain is one half a star. There is no getting around the fact that this was a troubled, compromised production as well as Ophuls' first foray into color and Cinemascope. Among many flaws - I found the image distortion of the wide-screen format and Ophuls' ever moving camera to be highly imcompatible.
That being said - the circus scenes and Peter Ustinov's performance are wonderful.