The Garish and Gripping 'Lola Montes'

Known for his always-agile camera and the lavish choreography of his shots, Ophüls ("Letter From an Unknown Woman," "The Earrings of Madame de . . . ") created an ornate, opulent and ostentatious film about an ornate, opulent and ostentatious woman. Our instincts make us want to see Lola as a heroine, and Carol as giving a heroic performance. Ophüls tricks us into playing a trick on ourselves.

As the story opens, so does the Mammoth Circus, conducted by the whip-cracking Ringmaster played by Peter Ustinov (who can never quite crack that whip, a running gag of considerable Freudian significance). He introduces the infamous Lola, who arrives on a throne, amid jugglers and clowns. The audience is invited to ask Lola questions, which they yell out: Whom does she love best? Why did she never stay with her lovers? Where are her children? Is she wearing a bra?

Remember, this is 1955, long before the appearance of People magazine.

In choosing her as his quasi-heroine, Ophüls was being prescient about the qualities of modern celebrity. Lola is famous for her sex life, for salacious rumors, but mostly for being famous. In choosing Carol as his lead actress, Ophüls was being coy: Carol had once thrown herself into the Seine over a love affair and was rescued by the taxi driver who had just dropped her off. The romance of such a reckless gesture, and the pathos of being fished out of the drink by a cabbie, must have made Carol irresistible to a director making a movie that so profoundly reflected itself -- and which is so campy about it.

There's nothing campier than the film's first flashback, which finds Lola and Liszt (Will Quadflieg) in a luxurious carriage, riding through the Italian countryside, visibly bored with each other. They share a farewell kiss that's uncomfortably stiff, and you realize what Ophüls is up to: life as tableau vivant, his supposedly real-life characters cast in poses and situations that are as deliberate and theatrical as anything in a circus.

Back in the center ring, in fact, Ustinov is announcing that 12 "tableaux vivants" will be staged about Lola's life, and Ophüls again takes us away from the circus, his 360-degree camera sweeps around the crowd, and we're off to the life of Lola.

Lola steals her mother's lover and avoids the arranged marriage Mom had planned for her, to a much older man. She eventually beds Liszt and Ludwig. Back at the circus, the Ringmaster talks about Lola's dreams of dancing, and Carol executes a series of simple steps -- it is all spectacle at half-speed, a lot of pseudopomp and scenery but short on almost every element of genuine drama and, like Carol, devoid of authority. She, like Lola and the circus, are like palimpsests of something we once saw, once imagined, but which are only being suggested here, not delivered.

Carol is too old to play the young Lola, too graceless to play a dancer, utterly devoid of convincing emotion, and so the obvious question is: Why watch "Lola Montes"? One reason, ironically, is the spectacle: Ophüls makes a beautiful film; the color is intoxicating, the camera moves with exactly the fluid brilliance Lola lacks, and Ophüls's mastery of his medium is unequaled. But here's what's more important: Art makes us view the world differently. Great art makes us look at the world differently, permanently. Watch "Lola Montes," and you may never watch a movie the same way again.

Lola Montes (115 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is not rated. It contains adult content.