Liebelei

A film set in Vienna. The year is the early 1900s. The army is a social class; officers go to the opera in uniform. Fritz is a young lieutenant. He is having an affair with a baron's wife. He is tired of it. He wants it over and she will not let go. One evening he meets two girls. Christine is a musician's daughter; her father plays violin at the opera. Fritz falls in love with her. From there the film is a story of happiness. Snow, a sleigh, a house in the country, a church, and two young people. The narrative holds this section long. Although we know the bad thing is coming, the film does not hurry. The baron finds out. A duel is called. The rules are set and Fritz cannot refuse. Christine knows nothing. What the narrative is interested in is not love but rules: its idea is that what is between the two young people is real, but that what ends it is a wholly formal order of honour. Christine's father is a separate layer. He is a musician; he plays other people's love stories at the opera and can say nothing to his own daughter. The last scene takes place at a window and the narrative does not show the death. Max Ophüls's camera has already found itself here. Long tracking shots, following on staircases, and constant movement within a room. The source is Arthur Schnitzler's stage play. Magda Schneider plays Christine; she would later be known as Romy Schneider's mother. The film opened in Germany in 1933; the regime changed that same year and Ophüls, who was Jewish, had to leave the country. Magda Schneider, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Luise Ullrich, Paul Hörbiger and Gustaf Gründgens are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes early German cinema and Ophüls's camerawork. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; its first half is almost without incident and the tempo is deliberately slow.