Liebelei

Director: Max Ophuls

1933 / 88min / 35mm

Produced on the cusp of the Weimar Republic’s total collapse—by the time of its release the Reichstag had burned, the Jewish Ophuls had fled for France, and his name was removed from the credits of release prints—this adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play of the same title was, in its fairly explicit anti-militarism, as against the grain of the prevailing mood as any German picture of its day. The touching tale of a fraught romance between a violinist’s daughter and a young officer in turn-of-the-last-century Vienna, both torn between desire and duty, and the first film in which Ophuls’s camera exhibits the grace and fluidity that will become his visual signature.

Distributor: Rialto Pictures

35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive

Part of Max Ophuls: Motion Within Motion