Two by Max Ophuls: Lola Montes (1955) and Madame de....(1953)

Max Ophuls is frivolous only if it is frivolous to be obsessed by the gap between the ideal and the reality of love.
--David Thomson

A shot that does not call for tracks
Is agony for poor dear Max
Who, separated from his dolly
Is wrapped in deepest melancholy
--James Mason

Love, the memory of love, the mortality of love comprise the Ophulsian heritage.
--Andrew Sarris

For those of us for whom time is fleeting and never stops Max Ophuls is a marvelous director, with his constantly moving camera observing the inevitable movement of time that one cannot halt.  Both Lola Montes and Madame de....take place in the nineteenth century, both recent and far away.  In Madame de.... a pair of earrings never stops moving:  from General Andre de... (Charles Boyer) to his wife Comtesse Louise de....(Danielle Darrieux) who sells them to a jeweler who sells them secretly back to the general who gives them to his mistress who sells them in Constantinople where they are bought by Baron Fabrizio Donati (Vittorio DeSica) who gives them to Louise again, without knowing their original source; when General Andre sees their reappearance he knows Louise and the Baron are lovers so he takes the earrings from  Louise and gives them to his niece whose husband goes bankrupt so the niece sells them to the jeweler that Louise had sold them to and then Louise sells all her other jewels and buys the earrings back, just before dying of a heart attack when Andre kills the Baron in a duel, with Louise willing the diamond earrings to the church.

The themes of love and circularity continue in the gorgeous Lola Montes, Ophuls' last film and his only one in color.  Only in recent years has the complete film become available, after years of shorter versions in various languages after the producer went bankrupt.  Lola's life is shown in flashbacks as she becomes a circus exhibit, with her on a turntable going one way as the camera goes the opposite way around her.  As Ophuls details Lola's life, adventures and liaisons -- from Franz Liszt to King Ludwig of Bavaria -- the camera swoops from low to high and back to low with the ups and downs of Lola's life as Lola strives to be independent, even having a carriage of her own following her with Liszt so she can escape when she needs to.  The film is widescreen, as Ophuls uses various decorations and masks for more intimate scenes.

Both these films are sympathetic to the struggles of finding love while asserting one's independence in society, struggles particularly for women, though Ophuls never degrades men.  The films are full of beauty and music, fleeting though their pleasures may be.