The most elaborate and expensive European production of its time, the movie was a flop during its original release in France in 1955 and was severely cut and clumsily dubbed when it reached the United States in 1959. Several rereleased versions have followed, including the digital restoration that launches the new Detroit Film Theatre season this weekend.
You can debate the claim by some critics (Andrew Sarris most loudly) that this fanciful screen biography of the 19th-Century dancer and femme fatale is the greatest film ever made. Yet try resisting the rococo charms served by director Max Ophuls, who packs a career's worth of visual detail into his final film.

Far less appreciated is what "Lola Montes" is truly about. Dig through all the ephemera and eccentric camera setups and you'll find a timely take on celebrity, especially female celebrity, that predates the tabloid exploits of Paris, Britney and Lindsay.

"Lola Montes" opens in the circus, where the dancer, emotionally numb and literally heartsick, is exhibited live in the center ring. Here the sleazy ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) tantalizes the audience by promising re-enactments -- often by the Mammoth Circus Midgets -- of Lola's most notorious scandals.

The film cuts to a series of flashbacks, starting with Lola's elopement with her mother's young lover, and continues on to various adult trysts, which include a backpacking student (Oskar Werner) and superstar composer Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg).

If Martine Carol's lead performance comes off a bit wooden, maybe it's because Lola is not so talented to begin with. Her real skill is her talent for crafting a defiant attitude toward sex and scandal. When Bavarian King Ludwig I (Anton Walbrook) is skeptical about her celebrated measurements, Lola tears off her bodice as proof. A resulting scene, which took several days to shoot, shows a small army of palace underlings seeking needle and thread to stitch Lola back together.

Back in France after a disastrous stint in Hollywood, director Ophuls had an obsessive need to frame his wide screen with objects ranging from statues to curtains to door frames, so much so that his camera seems almost weighed down in the process. That the movie will be presented in its original extra-wide aspect ratio is yet another reason to see "Lola Montes" on the DFT screen.