Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 09/16/2008
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: French
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 93 Minutes
Flags: Adult Humor, Sexual Situations
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
An exercise in style,
La Ronde was one of the few films of the 1950s to contain overtly sexual themes. The story is a series of character vignettes, set in Vienna in the early 1900s and held together by a narrator (
Anton Walbrook). As the title implies, both the story and the film's visual motifs are circular. Director
Max Ophuls uses an old-fashioned merry-go-round to foreshadow the film's events, in which each segment introduces a new character, who has an affair with a character from the previous scene. The film demands that the audience pay attention to the structure, to the interplay among the characters, and to the opulent visual elements; and the effect is synergistic delight, in which the viewer is engaged both visually and intellectually. Because it was filmed in black-and-white,
La Ronde does not have the garish look of some of
Ophuls' other films, notably
Lola Montès.
La Ronde is among the few foreign language films to receive multiple Oscar nominations, for Black & White Art Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay.
~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide
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