Letter from an Unknown Woman

Director: Max Ophuls

1948 / 87min / 35mm

In a deliciously artificial fin-de-siecle Vienna—stops include the Prater Park as seen under a blanket of snow— concocted with impeccable craftsmanship on a Universal backlot, Ophuls conducts a veritable symphony of moving camerawork, turning Stefan Zweig’s short story of consuming romantic delusion into a voluptuous tragedy, initiated when a young woman (Joan Fontaine) develops a consuming fascination with a dissolute concert pianist neighbor (Louis Jourdan). It opens with the ominous lines, “By the time you read this letter, I may be dead…” and proceeds through a series of beautifully wrought flashbacks, ending, invariably, without a dry eye in the house.

35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive

Distributor: Paramount