Now it's here, or as close as we'll ever get. The 115-minute version newly restored from the film's original elements and opening at the Coolidge Corner today returns Ophuls's wide-screen visuals and Technicolor hues to almost sinful clarity. The narrative structure is once more a deliriously wheeling series of fractals. A DVD release is imminent, but trust me: Seen on a big screen, this is a movie to get drunk on.
Sin is the film's subject, in fact, or one of many. The lady of the title was a real historical figure (1821-61), an Irish-born Spanish dancer and courtesan whose greatest art was scandal. Her many lovers included composer Franz Liszt and Ludwig, King of Bavaria; the latter's subjects rose in revolt against Lola's influence on their sovereign.
Ophuls isn't interested in biography, though - the movie would give a historian fits - but in what women want and what men see; in games of love, sex, and perception; in life's absurd, unknowable circus. When the film opens, Lola (Martine Carol) is at the end of the line: the featured attraction in a traveling show of trapeze artists and clowning dwarves. The Circus Master (Peter Ustinov) relates her career as a series of tableaux vivant; Lola herself is the fading jewel at center stage, taking questions from the audience and receding into her own memories, pulling us along for the ride.
The film's flashbacks erupt like hothouse orchids: here is Lola luring Liszt (Will Quadflieg) into break-up sex; here is her neglected adolescence and the soldier-lover (Ivan Desny) she stole from her mother (Lise Delamare); here are her seductions of a student (a young Oskar Werner) and an aging king (Anton Walbrook).
