Author: Lutz Bacher
Subject: Film Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2291-9
Pages: 400 pp., 43 b&w illus.
Description: A historical look at Max Ophuls' career.
Max Ophuls, who is considered one of the greatest film directors of all time, has long been seen as an "auteur"the artist in complete control of his work. Lutz Bachers examination of his American career gives us a unique perspective on the workings of the Hollywood system and the struggle of a visionary to function within it. He thus establishes clear connections between the production contexts of Ophuls' American films and their idiosyncratic style.
Drawing on documents in many archives and on interviews with more than sixty of Ophuls' contemporaries, Bacher traces the European director's struggle to find a niche in the U.S. film industry. He describes how Ophuls ran the gamut from ghost writing to substitute directing, to a debilitating association with Preston Sturges and Howard Hughes, to making four filmsLetter from an Unknown Woman and Caught among themin thirty months, and then returning to Europe with a runaway production that was to have starred Greta Garbo. Throughout, Bacher demonstrates that Ophuls' bending of conventional Hollywood methods to his own will through compromise and subversion allowed him to achieve a style that was both uniquely American and a point of departure for his later work. A rare synthesis of production history, stylistic analysis, and biography, this book is essential reading for serious film scholars and fans of the directors work.
Lutz Bacher teaches film and photography in the department of communications at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Mobile Mise en Scène, the standard work on long-take camera movement.
Praise for Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios
"Among the approximately 30 European film directors who sought sanctuary from Hitler by emigrating to Hollywood between 1933 and 1941, Ophuls is unique in significant ways, as Bachers excellent introduction makes clear. The very last of the lot to arrive in Hollywood in the fall of 1941, he had already made one new life in France; but as an active anti-Nazi, German-born and Jewish, he had compelling reason to flee the Vichy regime."Choice
"A sustained, intensively researched 'close-up' on the production of four of Max Ophuls' films. The result is not only an exemplary work of scholarship on a very important director, but also a significant contribution to the history of American filmmaking. One learns almost as much about Hollywood in the 1940s as about Ophuls and how he adapted to the placein fascinating (and often beautifully written) detail."Alan Williams, Rutgers University, author of The Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking
"Lutz Bacher's command of both the detail and range of Ophuls' Hollywood career inspires awe. This meticulously crafted book sets a new standard of excellence for production histories and provides a rich abundance of insights into Ophuls' working methods and the Hollywood system itself."Susan White, University of Arizona
