Letter From an Unknown Woman

1948/US/86mins
Dir: Max Ophüls
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman, John Good

 

Perhaps the finest American film from the famed European director Max Ophüls, and now digitally remastered, the film stars Joan Fontaine as a young woman who falls in love with a concert pianist.

Set in Vienna in 1900, the story is told in a complex flashback structure as the pianist, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), comes upon a letter written to him by Lisa Berndl (Fontaine), a girl who has been in love with him for years.

Stefan is in the process of fleeing Vienna on the eve of fighting a duel. As he prepares himself for the nocturnal journey, the letter arrives. It begins, By the time you read this letter, I may be dead…