Everybody's Woman

A film set in Italy. Gaby Doriot is a famous film actress. At the start of the film she is in a hospital, on an operating table. She is unconscious. The doctors are trying to work out what happened. The narrative goes back from there. She comes from a small town. She danced at a school. Then she goes to Milan. Extra work in films, then small parts, then leads. From there the film is a story of ascent. But there is a man at every step. A producer, a director, a businessman, a baron. Each gives her something and takes something in return. Gaby accepts it. The narrative shows her as neither innocent nor calculating. When she is famous nothing changes. She now belongs to more people and to herself not at all. One relationship seems real. Then it too turns out to be part of a calculation. What the narrative is interested in is not fame but ownership: the title says it directly, and across the narrative even her own name becomes a brand. The operating-table frame returns. What happened opens toward the end and it becomes clear it was not an accident. Max Ophüls's camera is in motion here too. Staircases, corridors, backstage and crowds; the camera follows people. This is the only film he made in Italy, in the period after leaving Germany and before settling in France. Isa Miranda won the best actress award at Venice for the part. Isa Miranda, Memo Benassi, Tatyana Pavlova and Federico Benfer are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1930s European cinema and Ophüls's camerawork. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear line; the flashbacks fold into each other and the surviving prints are in poor condition.