Tagline: This is the love every woman lives for…the love every man would die for!
Letter from an Unknown Woman movie storyline. In Vienna in 1900, Stefan Brand must face a duel the following morning. He has no intention of defending his honor however and plans to flee the city when he notices that he has received a letter from someone in his past. A struggling concert pianist at the time he met Lisa Berndle when she was just a teenager living next door.
Brand has had many women in his life however and unaware that Lisa is genuinely in love with him, forgets all about her. They meet again but he only vaguely remembers ever having met her. Unknown to him she bears his child and eventually marries a man who knows of her past but loves her very much. When she runs into Brand many years later her love for him resurfaces and she is prepared to abandon her son and husband for him. Tragedy follows.
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) is the classic romantic film – a lush tearjerker par excellence – of the bittersweet theme of unrequited, lost love (it’s considered a quintessential “woman’s picture”). Legendary European director Max Ophuls’ deeply-moving, timeless film, considered his greatest and most successful American film but a film unlike most Hollywood films. [The director’s name was given an alternate American spelling, OPULS, in the credits, as in his other American films of the 40s.] It demonstrates his lyrical, gliding camera movements, long tracking shots, atmospheric melancholy and romantic dialogue, the recreated flavor of turn-of-the century Vienna, and the exquisite acting talents of its delicate blonde heroine – portrayed by 31 year-old actress Joan Fontaine.
The film’s literate screenplay was written by previous Academy Award winner Howard Koch (screenwriter for Casablanca (1942)), and adapted from a 1922 short story by Stefan Zweig. Fontaine’s own production company produced the film. John Houseman, Orson Welles’ former partner and the uncredited co-author of Citizen Kane (1941), was the film’s producer, through Rampart Productions (a company owned by William Dozier and his wife, actress Joan Fontaine).
Although the film was not a commercial success upon its release and criticized as sentimental soap-opera, it has attained well-deserved status as one of the greatest films of its kind. Its cyclically-told tale of romantic yearning and pining for love is about an imaginary romance, embodied in the doomed, delusional (and illusory) relationship of the two romantic leads: a young neighbor girl’s (Fontaine) steadfast, sacrificial love for a self-absorbed, frivolous dilettante concert pianist (Jourdan).
A seduction leads to an unexpected pregnancy, and then to marriage to another. Both face an inextricable impasse and experience numerous missed opportunities over a span of twenty years – and ultimately fail to attain true romance. The heart-breaking tale of their relationship is communicated through flashbacks and the night-time reading of the deathbed letter written by the dying woman – she is the wife of the man the pianist must duel at the coming dawn.
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
Directed by: Max Ophüls
Starring: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman, John Good, Erskine Sanford, Leo B. Pessin, Sonja Bryden, Patricia Alphin
Screenplay by: Howard Koch
Cinematography by: Franz Planer
Film Editing by: Ted J. Kent
Costume Design by: Travis Banton
Set Decoration by: Russell A. Gausman, Ruby R. Levitt
Art Direction by: Alexander Golitzen
Music by: Daniele Amfitheatrof
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: April 28, 1948 (New York City, New York), May 4, 1948 (Los Angeles, California)
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