the audience applauded

An absolute waste of money

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The film tells the tragic story of Lola Montès, a great adventurer who becomes the main attraction of a circus after being the lover of various important European men.This would be the last film directed by Ophüls before his death of a heart attack in March 1957. As originally shown in France in 1955, the audience sees the events of Lola Montès' life through the use of flashbacks. Use of the technique was criticized upon its release and the movie did poorly at the box office. In response, the producers re-cut the film and shortened it in favor of a more chronological storyline, against the director's wishes.I cannot imagine this film in chronological order. What does that mean -- putting the circus at the end? What a terrible idea. Thank you, Criterion, for fixing this mess... it is so much better seeing her as the center of fascination and then having her life -- the source of the fascination -- revealed.

There aren't enough superlatives to describe how I feel about this stunning work of art. It's one of the movies that means so much to me, I find it hard to write about it. Let's ditch bitching about Martine Carol. She is excellent. I have never understood the snooty, patronising negativity about her performance. When an actor plays a king or queen, it's not required that they act royally. They absolutely must not do that, unless it's for comic effect. Otherwise their status is undermined. Their royalty is shown by the deference of others. The same is true here. Lola has the effect she has because we see her having the effect. The actress doesn't have to act charismatically - as if anyone could!The photography, set and costumes, script, music, performances, and of course the direction: wonderful. Anton Walbrook, what a pleasure it is to see him here, in another of his long line of superb performances. And there's Pauline Dubost, Henri Guisol, Ivan Desny, Oskar Werner...Lola's tale is a cautionary one of the risks of living life on your own terms. But there are people who can do no other, and Lola is one of those.Max Ophuls, the visionary director, was another.The greatness of this film humbles me and inspires me: human beings can rise to these heights of creativity. The proof is here. It is LOLA MONTES.

"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

In the Nineteenth Century, the Irish born dancer Lola Montès (Martine Carol) was the lover of many famous men, including Franz Liszt and the King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Countess of Landsfeld. With a revolutionary movement, she flees from Munich and travels to the United States of America. She is hired by the Circus Master (Peter Ustinov) that tells her scandalous love affairs in every show and she becomes the lead attraction of the circus. "Lola Montès" is not my favorite Max Ophüls film, but it is certainly his best work of cinematography, costumes and art decoration. The restored DVD highlights these aspects and it recalls Luchino Visconti style. However, the narrative of the life of the most scandalous European woman of the Nineteenth Century is tiresome in many moments. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Lola Montèz"