Restored Lola Montès Screening at Emerging Cinemas

Whatever Lola Montès wants, Lola Montès gets. And what Lola Montès wants is a makeover from head to toe, and the Cinémathèque Française is happy to oblige.

This restoration of Max Ophüls' infamously butchered 1955 melodrama seeks to undo the damage that was done by the producers to make it more appealing to audiences. The film was controversial — and a box office flop — in France because it was a veiled biography of Lola Montez, the scandal-ridden 19th century dancer whose affair with Ludwig I of Bavaria contributed to his 1848 abdication. The discovery of lost footage allowed the Cinémathèque Française to restore Ophüls' last film per his original specifications.

"Don't you ever dream of an affair with no end?" Franz Liszt asks Montès when she breaks off their relationship at the start of this bed hopping. Clearly not, as the flashbacks-intensive Lola Montès tell a colorful and potent story of an ambitious seeker of fame and fortune who skillfully uses her brains and body to get what she wants and needs. That's not to say the elegant though somewhat icy Martine Carol's Montès is a heartless social climber. She knows when it's time to leave for her and her latest conquest's sake. Lushly mounted by Ophüls and gloriously photographed by Christian Matras, Lola Montès literally creates a circuslike atmosphere around the dancer by re-enacting her life story before a paying audience under a big top (a suitably oily Peter Ustinov serves as the ringmaster). In 1955, the intention may have been to present Montès as a freak or a social pariah at the very least. In today's tabloid-obsessed society, she's just another Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, and the circus setting actually goes a long way to engendering some sympathy for "the world's most
scandalous woman."