La Ronde | 
 enlarge | Director: Max Ophuls
Actors: Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, Simone Simon, Garard Philipe
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 4530
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Hifi Sound, Subtitled, Surround Sound, Thx, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 93
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 1765
UPC: 715515031424
EAN: 0715515031424
ASIN: B001BEK8BK
Theatrical Release Date: March 16, 1954
Release Date: September 16, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Amazon.com essential video
The exquisite circularity of the roundelay has always been an attractive cinematic device, but never has it been used with more delicacy and canny insight than in La Ronde, Max Ophuels's adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play Reigen. The camera glides, swirls, and delicately dances around fleeting moments between lovers, from chance meetings and secret trysts, to the sincere but hopeless courtship by a besotted admirer, to the relaxed banter of cuckolding married couples. Ophuels's wry glimpses behind closed doors and pulled curtains are both cynical and sweet, generous of character but suspect of motive. As one scene ends, we waltz along as the characters change partners and dance again and again; we follow streetwalkers and soldiers, courtesans and counts, until we come full circle. Returning to the superb metaphor of the carousel, where dapper Anton Walbrook wanders about as host and commentator (a sort of literary ringmaster, like Peter Ustinov in Lola Montes), Ophuels plays at the game of love with a cocked grim and a sly jab, though he never belittles or judges. What could easily have descended into farce is lifted into loving satire by Ophuels's elegant touch and sparkling wit. A huge success in Europe, its continental attitude wasn't embraced by American audiences at the time. But it has come to be regarded one of Ophuels's finest and most beautifully visualized films. Everyone is somebody's fool, and isn't it wonderful? --Sean Axmaker
Product Description
Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophuls's delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's controversial turn-of-thecentury play La ronde. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, and aristocrats, all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous as it is enchanting and shot with Ophuls's trademark intricate cinematography. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls, Interview with Max Ophuls's son, the Academy Award winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls
Interview with actor Daniel Gelin (Napoleon, Testament of Orpheus)
Interview with film scholar Alan Williams, Selected correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play
New and improved English subtitle translation. PLUS: A new essay by film critic Terrence Raffert
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 La Ronde is a wonderful mixture of anticipation, pleasure and rue. It might even make you think wisdom could be involved October 11, 2008
"What is still missing for love to start its rounds? A waltz...and here it is. The waltz turns. The carousel turns...and the merry-go-round of love can begin turning, too."
If Le Plaisir is a clever study in how pleasure can lead to despair, hopelessness and, fortunately, more pleasure, and if Madame D... is a masterpiece of love's elegant sadness, perhaps La Ronde can be seen as a carousel of pleasure, where men and women's most natural instinct is celebrated with joy and infidelity.
Max Ophuls' La Ronde is a wonderful mixture of anticipation, pleasure and rue. It might even make you think wisdom could be involved. We're now in Vienna in 1900, a world of waltz, where lovers change lovers until we come back full circle. This delightful waltz includes counts, maids, actresses, soldiers, poets, prostitutes and married couples. Thanks to our host and escort, played by Anton Walbrook, we are not simply observers. We're complicit. "I am you," he tells us, "the personification of your desire to know everything."
On this carousel of pleasure, amusingly disguised for some as love, we can savor both the situations and the actors that Max Ophuls has given us. Ophuls is the master chef, but it is the likes of Danielle Darrieux, Jean-Louis Barrault, Simone Simon, Simone Signoret, Gerard Philipe and all the rest who keep this souffle from falling. And speaking of falling, one of the most amusing and endearing episodes is our host encountering a momentary breakdown of the carousel, then fixing it in time for Daniel Gelin to continue with his waltz in the arms of Madame Breitkopf (Darrieux).
"True love is possible only where there is truth and purity" says Madame Breitkopf's husband to her in bed one evening, the afternoon after her meeting with the young man played by Gelin. The next evening he'll meet the young girl he will make his mistress. Thank goodness truth and purity have little to do with pleasure, which needs only desire, a bit of self-delusion and a willingness not to learn from experience,
It's difficult to watch Madame D... without wanting to weep. It's difficult to watch La Ronde without wanting to smile. This is a movie to take delight in just as it is, without too much earnest analysis. Not the least of its charms is the recurring waltz, "Der Reigen" by Oscar Straus, which our lovers dance to in each other's arms.
The Criterion DVD looks just fine. The disc contains several extras, including an amusing interview with Daniel Gelin and a commentary with Ophuls specialist Susan White. By all means also buy the two other great Ophuls films Criterion has released: Earrings of Madame de... and Le Plaisir, and search out Lola Montes and The Reckless Moment (The Blank Wall) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ].
A French Lesson in Infidelity. June 22, 2008
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
It was a happy day when I first heard Criterion was finally releasing Max Ophuels' two great films, La Ronde (1950) and Criterion Collection: Earrings of Madame De. Ophuels is known for his brilliant tracking shots and elaborate camera movements (which influenced Stanley Kubrick). He is also known for his black-and-white French bedroom farce, La Ronde (1950), starring Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, and Gerard Philipe, based on Arthur Schnitzler's controversial 1897 play, Reigen. (Adolf Hitler considered Schnitzler's play obscene for its depiction of the sexual morals and class ideology of its day. Schnitzler, a doctor, recognized that syphilis was not limited to certain layers of Viennese society.) La Ronde ("The Roundabout") follows a series of stories about love affairs that end with one of the partners forming a new sexual liaison with another person. A soldier (Serge Reggiani) first meets a prostitute (Simone Signoret) and then has an affair with a young parlor maid, who then has sex with the young man of the house, who in turn has sex with a young wife, who then has sex with her husband, and so on until the film completes its circle with a Count (Gerard Philipe) having sex with the same prostitute. La Ronde is technically brilliant, the cinematography sparkles, and this is truly great cinema. Roger Ebert calls Ophuels' films "one of the great pleasures of the cinema."
The Criterion edition features a newly restored high-definition digital transfer; audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls; an interview with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, discussing his father's work; an interview with actor Daniel Gelin (Napoleon, Testament of Orpheus); an interview with film scholar Alan Williams; selected correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play; new subtitle translation; and a new essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty.
G. Merritt
A movie once seen you'll never forget it January 12, 2006
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
A classic "round" of vignettes, each about love, each vignette blending into the next by means of a single character, like passing a baton in a foot race, until we're back at the beginning again. It begins with a young prostitute (played by Simone Signoret) meeting a soldier (Serge Reggiani) and ends, after about six vignettes, with a different soldier (Gerard Philipe) paying a visit to Signoret. All of it is held together by a raconteur, played superbly with just the right amount of sardonic wit by Anton Walbrook, who steals the picture.
Max Ophuls's production is very stylized, with rococo turn-of-the-century sets. It's light and witty, but insightful, too, with the emphasis on the fleeting aspects of love and the vanity and double standards held to by the male of the species. The movie has everything going for it: a brilliant idea, a wonderful script, great acting, and terrific camerawork. Movie-making at its finest. [It was banned in America for four years on obscenity charges: the women enjoy their illicit love affairs a little too much for the censors' tastes at the time. Finally they came to their senses - the censors, I mean.]
Still entrancing over 50 years later December 16, 2001
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
My high school French teacher took the whole class to see this picture and I found it charming and fell in love with Danielle Darrieux. I enjoyed it even more a half century later, I was impressed with the excellent picture quality. All the actors spoke beautiful French,clear enough to make it an excellent teaching lesson. I admire the courage of my French teacher given some controversy at the time. The music in the VCR soundtrack seems rather poorly preserved, perhaps a DVD recording at some time could help improve the music quality.
A feast for the eyes April 3, 2001
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
"La Ronde" succeeds on many levels. The screenplay, adapted from the play by Arthur Schnitzler, is witty and provocative. It has a lightness of touch and delicate irony that is peculiar to the French. The performances are excellent-especially Danielle Darrieux's portrayal of an adulterous wife. However, the real distinction of this movie is it's visual style. The black and white cinematography is anything but flat. There are layers and textures in this film that are a feast for the eyes. The sumptuous set decorations are beautifully ornate-almost baroque. "La Ronde" is replete with camera angles reminiscent of "Citizen Kane." There is a fantastic overhead shot of a young courtesan whose head is in the center of hanging light fixture-or chandelier. This aspect is that of a poet who is idealizing her. It is an absolutely brilliant moment. Ophuls has a wonderful sense of movement. The long tracking shots and circular motion complement, instead of detract from, the action and emotion of the story. Particularly dazzling are the carousel scenes where circles run counter to one another. One might say that the omnipresent narrator is rather intrusive, but he grows on you. He's French, after all......
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