Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
On a recent sojourn in the city of bemouth culture I experienced a film, never seen, ever heard of, with wonderment and enchantment, a love story, without salacious, physical intimacy, just poignant, heart encompassing devotion. A story of love at first glimpse, palpating with bona fide longing, yearning for requitement. Directed by Max Ophuls (1902-1957), based on a novella written by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), it stuns with the purest, lyrical sentiments, beauty in a long-ago era, never to be duplicated or reincarnated. Zweig’s prodigiousness radiates in his every written word, “The World of Yesterday” resonates with the lifestyle, refinement, enlightenment of Vienna before it was obliterated by the Nazis during the second world war; a travesty of angst, doom, forever mourned.
Filmed in black and white “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, commences in Vienna, 1900, with actor Louis Jourdan, as pianist, “Stefan Brand” planning to escape an imminent dual, receives a letter from someone who has faded from his selective memory; he is frozen in time, suspended from reality, mesmerized by the inescapable tenderness of a treatise meant solely for him. Joan Fontaine gifts “Lisa Berndle” a genuine, sincere naivety, cloaked in unadulterated fidelity; her heart is his, his to hold, his to wound or his to decimate. The camera’s sublime lavishment on the celestial features of the lovers enhances the fervidity of romance, meant to resonate perpetually.
Sitting amidst a corps of neophytes, eagerly awaiting every scene only exponentially intensified the experience; knowing that “the enthusiasm of youth is the spark that lights the fires of progress’’ creativity, also wise, you can’t “reach your full potential until you learn to live your life in the present.”
“Letter from an Unknown Woman” is a beacon, a purifying, poetic, study of the enigmatic power of film to electrify, secure attention, awesomeness with a floating camera and protagonists worthy of indelible acclaim.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
Peneflix
