Liebelei

 Liebelei is a 1932 melodrama directed by the Austrian filmmaker Max Ophuls.  The film is characteristic of the director's later, more celebrated, movies:  the subject is the vagaries of romantic love.  In his famous later films, Ophuls' tendency toward the maudlin is moderated by his world-weary continental cynicism and, as he grew older, his subject tilted toward a rather abstract, if bittersweet, contemplation of how the passing of time affects his characters -- he finds particularly interesting the plight of aging courtesans.  These preoccupations are partially exposed in Liebelei, a film based on a celebrated play by the Austrian writer, Arthur Schnitzler.  Schnitzler specialized in devising complex psychological portraits, again often of women, and Freud regarded him as a peer in his understanding of human motivations.  In his great, final films (such as La Ronde, Le Plaisir, and Lola Montez), Ophuls uses a film grammar that is well-nigh monstrously elaborate:  his camera moves incessantly along intricate pathways and he has the tendency to devise baroque sets full of platforms, stairs connecting multiple levels, and obstructions to view:  Ophuls seems to want his camera to be moving at all times, but, also, to be hemmed-in by plates of glass, raised spaces, and other barriers to the camera's free-range roaming.  He was also famous for his elaborate crane shots.  Liebelei, although made two decades before his late films, shows some of these traits:  Ophuls has a predilection for creating semi-translucent glass walls between different spaces and many of the locations are hard to parse in spatial terms:  he often shoots through partially closed doorways and the action is frequently half-obstructed by intervening plane surfaces.  There's an early crane shot marred by technical deficiencies in the apparatus -- the shot is very jerky and  the camera movement overly obtrusive.  Many of the locations where action is staged resemble labyrinths with odd alcoves and strange corridors leading away from the set:  we don't know where to look.  Ophuls has the habit of staging everything as if it takes place in an elaborately perfumed and congested lady's boudoir.  Some shots seem to be primarily about decor.  In an extended sequence, the camera watches passively as a military officer escorts a lady to her flat; their walk takes them through shadowy urban landscapes half-buried in snow.  Nothing seems to be going on and the images are dark and hard to interpret.  But, in fact, the couple are falling in love and the transit through the melancholy wintry alleys slows the picture to a crawl, but, for an expressive purpose.  (This sequence is mirrored by a later montage in which the same couple ride a sleigh through a wooded landscape with wet,  heavy snow bundling all of the trees -- the sequence is a mix of exteriors and unconvincing rear projection shots.  It also brings the picture to a stand-still but this dilation of time, a series of shots that all look alike, has a signal importance to the end of the film.)  

The plot is fairly simple.  At the opera, Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio is being performed.  A caddish dragoon, Fritz Lobheimer, leaves early, hustling over to his mistress' palace.  He is engaged in an extra-marital affair with the wife of a Baron.  The Baron sensing that something is amiss also leaves the opera early, rushes home, but fails to catch the adulterous couple in flagrante delicto -- Fritz makes a narrow escape.  Meanwhile at the opera, two shop girls are impressed to see the Kaiser appear at the show.  They drop a binoculars from their seats high in the theater, almost beaning another dragoon named Theo.  Lieutenant Theo turns this incident into an excuse to seduce one of the girls, a glove-maker (always filmed with a scary-looking shears in her hands) named Mizzi.  Mizzi is a good-time girl who likes to drink Tokay, a euphemism for sex in this movie.  Mizzi's friend, Christine, is a virtuous middle-class girl who aspires to be an opera singer.  Fritz, after his close call, comes back to the Opera where he is recruited by Theo, his best friend, to take Christine home (Theo wants to be alone with Mizzi).  Christine and Fritz fall in love.  Fritz tries to break off the meretricious relationship with the Baron's wife.  But the affair is well-known in Vienna -- apparently, everyone at the garrison knows about the affair except the cadaverous and scary-looking Baron.  (He's played by the famous German actor, Gustav Gruendgrens.)  The Baron challenges Fritz to a duel.  By this time, Fritz is head-over-heels in love with Christine.  In the snowy woods, the duel takes place -- the aggrieved husband gets the first shot at ten paces.  He kills Fritz.  Theo tells Christine that her beloved has been killed in a fight over a married woman.  Christine, filmed in a close-shot, is incoherent with horror and grief.  Ophuls shows her through some complicating windows and window-sills.  Then, she throws open the window in a stairwell and dives out into the courtyard, killing herself.  In the final shot, we hear Fritz and Christine swearing eternal love to one another  dialogue from their sleigh ride, while the screen shows us the trees in the Wienerwald all draped in snow.  There are some minor subplots that don't really develop.  Christine, for instance, is an aspiring opera singer herself and, as the noose is drawing tighter around Fritz, she auditions for a part and seems to sing very badly (it seems she may be singing a part from Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel.)  The acting is well-observed and the staging effective.  The movie is 92 minutes long and reasonably engaging, although, I think, chiefly interesting for the light it sheds on Ophuls subsequent development.