The history of cinema is the history of lost movies and, sometimes, of miraculous recoveries; that is, at least, the story of Max Ophüls’s last film, “Lola Montès,” from 1955 (which I discuss in this clip). It was a critical and a box-office disaster in France, was recut by the producer, and, after a partial restoration (by another producer, Pierre Braunberger) in the late sixties, was definitively returned to its glorious original state only a few years ago. Its presentation at the New York Film Festival in 2008 was a great event (I wrote about it here then)—it restored not just a movie but the very history of the medium, and added another titanic masterwork to the canon, one that makes its grandiosity its tragic yet sumptuous subject. The passion that makes a great performer and the self-abasing show of it that makes a mere celebrity are both filmed by Ophüls with a love of spectacle that’s inseparable from his suspicion and fear, both of which were sadly borne out by the very fate of the film. The frame of the story—a circus in which Lola performs—is set in the United States; that’s where the real-life Lola Montès (née Eliza Gilbert, in Ireland) ended her days, in 1861. She’s buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn.
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
Dept. of Medicine
How to Die in Good Health
The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Peter Attia argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.
By Dhruv Khullar
A Reporter Aloft
Are Flying Cars Finally Here?
They have long been a symbol of a future that never came. Now a variety of companies are building them—or something close.
By Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Shouts & Murmurs
Stories from the Trump Bible
And Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, “This trial is very unfair. You are a corrupt judge, and your wife is a very nasty woman.”
By Bruce Headlam
Daily Cartoon
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, April 16th
“First, Goldilocks said the interest rates were too high. Then, Goldilocks said they were too low. Then, in agreement with the Federal Reserve Board, she finally said they were just right.”
By Christopher Weyant