By the time Max Ophuls arrived in the States, the year 1941, he was already an old hand at directing and helmed in many a country including Germany, Italy, France and Holland. When he was finally recognized for his works and hired in 1946 by one Howard Hughes for the 1956 noir-thriller Vendetta, Hughes (heavy) handed him his marching papers after only two days of shooting. Never one to be discouraged, the determinant Ophuls would go on to complete an amusing swashbuckler- The Exile in 1947 which was written by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who was also featured in the film. Ophuls went on to make a heart-rending recreation of old Vienna in Letter From An Unknown Woman in 1948, based on Austrian novelists Stefan Zweig's novella with Joan Fontaine as the girl who sacrifices all for the sake of love and French filmstar Louis Jourdan as the philandering concert pianist who fails to recognize her lifelong devotion, though he fathers her child in a brief affair.
A happy partnership with English voluntary exile James Mason produced two notable American melodramas ; Caught (1948), with Mason as a kindly doctor. Barbara Bel Geddes as a poor but ambitious gal and Robert Ryan the barbarous millionaire who loves her, and an intense The Reckless Moment (1949) with a memory lingering performance via Mason as an Irish blackmailer who falls head over heels with the woman (Joan Bennett) he is persecuting. Ophuls soon returned to France where he would make two of his most inspired films - La Ronde (1950) and the epic Lola Montes (1955) that canonized his illustrious career. 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.