‘Lola’ radiates haunting beauty

“Lola Montes,” director Max Ophuls’ first film in color and Cinemascope, was in 1955 the most expensive movie ever produced in France. It’s set in a circus where Montes, a legendary 19th century courtesan (reigning sex symbol Martine Carol), celebrated for her affairs with Franz Liszt and the king of Bavaria, tells her story in a series of vignettes.

As the ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) cracks his whip, a dazzling panorama unfolds with elephants, tigers and a daredevil trapeze climax. But while the circus offers its distorted showbiz version of Lola’s life, she remembers it differently, and we see the love she felt for the aged king and her amusement at a young lover (Oskar Werner) who wants to marry her.

As the film begins, Lola is exhausted; her heart, perhaps broken, is ready to give out. As Ophuls, famed for his tracking camerawork, tells her tale with arresting flashbacks, we come to see Lola as she is in the final image: Caged like a circus animal, fated to be viewed as a sideshow attraction.

Critics trashed “Montes,” and the legendary filmmaker of such classics as “Letter from an Unknown Woman” and “Le Ronde” died of a heart attack in 1957.

In this new restoration, first unveiled at Cannes in May, the sumptuous color schemes give the chilly masterwork the burnished passion it deserves.