An Open Letter to a German Friend

MARCEL OPHULS An Open Letter to a German Friend Lucq-de-Béam, October 10, 2002 Dear Martina! Recently, while suffering through the dreadful "thematic evening" dedicated to the memory of Max Ophuls by the "Kulturmenschen" of arte, I thought a great deal about you and the very beautiful documentary film that you made a dozen years ago.1 Why the devil did the bureaucrats of Strasburg think it necessary to commission this depressing piece of routine t? biopic from a couple of old hands from Saar television ,2 when all they had to do was to rebroadcast your little gem? Their film which, other than two precious interviews,3 was really dismal, contented itself with one mise-en-scène idea, no doubt in order to symbolize "uprooting through exile": coming back again and again to bad shots of train stations, of locomotives, and to a mediocre interview (in German, of course) with a compulsive (as Vincent Amiel would say), very pedantic and conscientious, very Germanic "Ophuls expert," filmed—you guessed it—in a train compartment. The other cinematic brainwave, if I dare to put it that way, was to inflict upon us a sort of transitional choreography, with medium shots of gesticulating arms, in the manner of a poor man's Pina Bausch.4 This was no doubt supposed to express symbolically the notions of mastery and of refinement. All this only to tell you, dear Martina, that in order to understand the special place occupied by Max Ophuls' not-exactly-mainstream cinematic art in the popular culture of the past century, I think one has to be a little bit of an artist oneself. You used to be one. Are you still? That's why I have taken such a long time to answer you after receivAri ^ona Quarterly Volume 6o, Number 5, Special Issue 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004- 1610 ?6 Marcel Ophuls ing your book on the making of Lola Montés.5 It is certainly an exciting research project, but it is no longer the work of an artist. I learned a number of things from the book, including the genuine betrayal committed by that nice Martine Carol. It seems that she agreed to record a commentary for The Sins of Lola Monte?,6 the counterfeit version hacked up by the producers and whose projection is now forbidden worldwide. Madeleine Gug, the French editor of the film (and therefore , whether you like it or not, the chief editor of the original version! ) had resigned rather than participating in such a massacre. That is an important event in the film's history, and yet you forget to mention it. Why? Was it the concern with remaining "objective" that guided you this time? From my point of view as an old specialist of long documentaries on contemporary history, the word has no meaning, since we are not any of us (historians, journalists, sociologists or film makers) scientists. It seems to me so much more important to know how to assume one's own subjectivity, one's own point of view. Was it this concern with objectivity which kept you from choosing sides this time, as if your role were suddenly to act as referee between the execrable producers, Albert Caraco and his accomplices, and my genius of a father? As if, for the purposes of your research, you could no longer side with the film maker, no matter how much you admire him. What motive could have inspired you to place face to face on the printed page, for the French and German versions, the name of Jacques Natanson with that of the charming but marginal Franz Geiger, or the name of Jean D'Eaubonne with that of the very obliging Willy Schatz, as though these creative collaborators were of at least equal standing? You know very well that Natanson was my father's preferred screenwriter and that the formidable D'Eaubonne was his architect-decorator of choice during all the last years of his life. Just as you know that it was not only CinemaScope— although that ungainly format promulgated by idiotic producers in order to "compete with" (sic!) television...