Max Ophüls

Elegant sets, virtuoso camera movements, impossible passions: in Max Ophüls's films, beauty is always shadowed by vertigo. He captures desire, memory and the passage of time through characters swept along by a momentum they cannot stop.

Choreographies of Desire

From Letter to an Unknown Woman to Madame de…, love takes the form of memory, fantasy or a missed encounter. With Lola Montès, his final film, whose restoration drew on elements preserved in the Cinémathèque's collections, this fascination reaches a spectacular form, blurring the boundaries between reality, memory and representation.

Three major works through which to discover a filmmaker whose virtuosity has never stopped probing what escapes us: love, desire and time.