La ronde

Director: Max Ophuls

1950 / 93min / 4K DCP

Based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler, as had been Ophuls’s 1933 Liebelei, La Ronde, set in turn-of-the-last-century Vienna, is a baton-passing narrative consisting of 10 individual vignettes in which pairs of lovers—among their ranks Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon, and Jean-Louis Barrault—meet, couple, and then change partners, until finally the “dance” comes full circle. Remarkably free of tut-tutting moralism and a marvel of light-footed mise en scène, censors were appalled by Ophuls’s bed-hopping merry-go-round, overseen by “Master of Ceremonies” Anton Walbrook, but audiences in Europe and North America flocked to it in droves.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Max Ophuls: Motion Within Motion