La Signora di Tutti

Director: Max Ophuls

1934 / 89min / DCP

We first encounter starlet Gabriella Murge (Isa Miranda) at the height of her fame and in the trough of despair; in the aftermath of her attempted suicide, a series of fragmentary flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks) show us the primrose path that led her to the operating table. Much more than a dry run for Lola Montés, with which it shares certain similarities, La Signora di Tutti displays an extravagant emotionalism that makes it an outlier in Ophuls’s filmography, perhaps attributable to the fact that this was the only film he made in famously voluble Italy. “In retrospect, Isa Miranda’s full-bodied and warm-blooded incarnation of Gaby Doriot should have been hailed as one of the iconographical landmarks of the Thirties.”—Andrew Sarris

Distributor: Viggo SRL