"Letter From an Unknown Woman" (1948)

Unrequited love can be recovered from, but formerly requited love lingers with even the most hardened of individuals. Still yet, liking someone from afar, only to have your feelings confirmed and reciprocated, can breed an intensity of devotion and passion that can be unhealthy. Letter From an Unknown Woman by description sounds like a tawdry melodrama: a man, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), receives a letter from a nameless, soon to be dead woman, Lisa (Joan Fontaine), recounting how she pined for him from afar, before having a glorious but brief affair that left her, unbeknownst to him, pregnant with his child. She kept the child secret because she didn’t want to ask anything of him – and probably because she thought it would temper the idyll of their time together. In the hands of director Max Ophuls though, the film rises above melodrama to become capital-d Drama. The film is aiming for high emotion, but Ophuls has deeper thematic interests about romance and love in mind, and he observes Lisa’s motivations and actions with sympathy while also understanding that they’re volatile and questionable. Ophuls treats the film like the opera music that plays a crucial role in the story, letting the camera glide along as if constantly set to an orchestral piece. Ophuls uses light and camera movement for expressive ends, emphasizing the progressively heightened emotions of Lisa. Notice the slow growth in high contrast of light and shadow; it’s subtle but crucial to our response. Lisa is a hopeless romantic who treats life with a corrosive dreaminess, all but predestined to blow up in her face. Even when Lisa gets exactly what she wants -- as she does on more than one occasion -- she finds excuses to induce things to fail because reality is never quite as satisfying as the unstable fantasy she’s built in her mind. 

Grade: A