Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

blanche-2 French stars of the day abound in "La Ronde," Max Ophuls ode to love in the Vienna of 1900. Anton Walbrook serves as narrator and plays some small roles in the various vignettes, which star Simone Signoret, Simone Simon, Serge Reggiani, Danielle Darrieux, Ferdinand Gravey, Jean-Louis Barrault, Isa Miranda, and Gerard Philip - quite a cast.Using the image of the carousel, the narrator takes us through a series of love/lust stories which by 1950 standards are at times very explicit, so much so that the film wasn't released in the U.S. until 1954, though its original release to other countries was in 1950. There is prostitution, adultery, performance anxiety, an older man with practically a teenager, and an older woman/younger man scenario.Employing a beautiful, catchy theme by Oscar Strauss, "La Ronde" is lyrical with lovely performances, and certainly nothing like the films it inspired - Vadim's remake and also the later "Chain of Desire" (not one of my favorites). Some of the stories are short, some not as good, but they all are infused with charm, humor, fluidity, and beautiful atmosphere and detail of the period.Though not in the Orphuls version, which emphasizes love and sex with the narrator's cynical and amused view, the original play has to do with the spread of STDs, a theme picked up in "Chain of Desire." "La Ronde," however, is all about pleasure and fun.

Dae Any individual so facile, so without even the very fundamental tools of perception required to grasp the absurdity of attacking Godard's 'Style' should be quite fully dismissed, their ludicrously fecund assertions with them. Such an individual is one who can only assumed to have never watched a film by either Godard or Ophuls, lest he might have realised the supreme irrelevance of inconsequential Godardisms on a remarkable body of work. So contemptible do I find the incestuously journalistic tripe that this user feels necessary to fob off as critique that, as evidenced, I was move to address it directly, to commit the marked hypocrisy of failing to attend the work itself. You are fortunate then that several other passably fair views of the work, not one that one need think more than once about seeing at the nearest opportunity, exist on this very page.All we need now is a decent DVD release.

ngambi1 Yes, this movie is based on overt sexual tendencies; there is no argument there. What is so amazing about this movie is the cinematography. Ophuls created so many sweeping shots, so well, using only a camera on a track. This is an amazing feat. Also this movie echoes a lot of Freud. Remember, Ophuls is German and certainly read Freud during his life.One of Freud's greatest works involving psychoanalysis is parapraxes, or slips of the tongue. In La Ronde, parapraxes play a major role, for parapraxes also apply to misplacement of items (and people). For every love, there is another lover. Freud would say that no matter how much you love your partner, there is a better partner for you out there. A partner that the second you see, you will become instantly infatuated with. La Ronde does an excellent job of this.

writers_reign I've just read all the previous comments on this and I'm surprised that none of them apparently grasped that the main thrust of the plot was the passing of venereal disease from one character to another. It's not just coincidence that the first coupling is between a prostitute and a soldier - prostitutes traditionally work near army barracks and are, or arguably were in 1900, more likely to be carriers of venereal disease than most other women simply because by definition they had sex with more men than the average woman, married or single, in 1900. The vastly overrated semi-Amateur film maker Jean-Luc Godard dismissed both the film and one of France's leading actors (Gerard Philippe) with the words 'France's worst actor in France's worst film', which in itself should be sufficient to send all intelligent people flocking to see La Ronde. It is, of course, dated. It has to be, it was made 54 years ago yet it still retains that quality that has always eluded and will always elude Godard, Style. What if not stylish should we call it when our self-appointed narrator, Anton Walbrook, discards his slightly down-market raincoat and dons an opera cape to lead us to a sleazy quarter of Vienna and make us privy to the initial sexual encounter, the first, of course, of many, between prostitute Simone Signoret and soldier Serge Reggiani (soon to play similar roles in Jacques Becker's 'Casque d'Or') and provide the first 'take' on love/sex which is indifference; even when Signoret is prepared to waive her fee Reggiani disdains free sex on the grounds that her room is a ten minute walk from where they met and only reluctantly does he finally agree to an al fresco coupling from which he hurries away with barely a 'thank you', let alone a cigarette. Cynicism is still rampant in the next encounter in which Regginani seduces Simone Simon's comely housemaid then hurries back to the dance where they had met. Cynicism of a different sort informs the next encounter when the young man of the house (Daniel Gelin) where Simon is employed practices his seduction technique on her before attempting it with the real thing in the shape of older, married Danielle Darrieux. This episode, together with its successor (Darrieux and her husband, Fernand Gravey) serves as a filmic equivalent of an interval in a theatre (the film is based, as is widely known, on a play by Viennese playwright Artur Schnitzler)and Gelin's initial impotence is metaphored subtly (for 1950) by the breaking down of the roundabout which allows Ophuls to cut away to Walbrook in mechanic mode and then back to a now successful Gelin consummating his infatuation for Darrieux. And so it goes on, brief encounters, longer liaisons, just like life in fact. Virtually all of the cast had or would appear in classic films, not least Jean-Pierre Barrault, so memorable in 'Les Enfants du Paradis', Gerard Philippe, the original 'Fanfan le Tulipe' with 'Les Orgueillex' still to come, Serge Reggiani, a veteran of 'Les Portes de la Nuit', laughed off the screen in 1946 and now regarded rightly as a masterpiece, and so on, arguably only Isa Miranda as the actress let the side down. All in all a triumph. 8/10