Maximillian Oppenheimer aka Max Ophuls

By the time that Max Ophuls (1902-1957) made his way to the States in 1941, he already boasted a solid canon with his directorial efforts in Germany, Italy, France and Holland. When he was at last hired in 1946 by Howard Hughes for Vendetta (1950) he was fired after only a couple of days shooting. He completed a lighthearted swashbuckler. The Exile (1947), written by and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr and went on to make an endearing recreation of Vienna in 1948's Letter From An Unknown Woman, based on Stefan Zweig's short story, starring Joan Fontaine as a lovelorn lass, hopelessly devoted to an unfeeling pianist ( Louis Jordan) who initially rejects her affections before embarking on a dalliance that results in a visit from that great white stork.

A happy-chappy partnership with English voluntary exile James Mason yielded two capable American melodramas ; Caught (1948), with Mason as a congenial doctor, Barbara Bel Geddes as a poor but highly ambitious gal and the intense Robert Ryan as the misanthropic millionaire who marries her; and The Reckless Moment (1949) with Mason as an Irish blackmailer who falls heads over heels for the woman he is persecuting (Joan Fontaine). Ophuls would soon return to France, where he would turn out two of his finest pictures, 1950's La Ronde and Lola Montes in 1955, before his early death due to complications of rheumatic fever. Marcel Ophuls, the progeny of proud papa Max, continued the family's cinematic legacy as an acclaimed documentarian who directed and produced the powerful and poignant The Sorrow and the Pity in 1969.