Letter From an Unknown Woman

One of cinema’s most achingly poignant romances, Max Ophüls’ version of Stefan Zweig’s novella is also, despite being shot in a Hollywood studio, one of the great films about fin-de-siècle Vienna. About to leave the city in order to avoid a duel, concert pianist Stefan Brand receives and reads a letter from a woman he can no longer remember – Ilse, who first nurtured a crush on him as a schoolgirl neighbour and whose later encounters with him were considerably more intimate… Both the flashback structure and Franz Planer’s long, sinuous camera movements trap the lovelorn heroine – Joan Fontaine, magnificent throughout – within a cruel cycle of obsessive longing born of romantic fantasy (in which regard Louis Jourdan’s suave, slightly shallow beauty fits Brand perfectly).

A wry meditation on memory, misplaced desire and the options open to women in patriarchal society, the film is at once darkly ironic and deeply moving.