Alicia I love this movie so much

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

mcganns2 Max Ophüls' film, Letter from an Unknown Woman, is tragic love story about a woman who becomes completely enchanted by her neighbor. Set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, the film encompasses the true culture and spirit going on in the city during this time. Although it ends in tragedy for all parties, one cannot ignore the undertones that speak to love and its consequences. While Ophüls' film may be old, I believe it is a timeless work of art that many people can still relate to their own lives. It begins when a man named Stephan Brand moves into his new house. He is a wonderful concert pianist that has an affinity for women, many different women. Lisa Berndle is his young naive neighbor who, after seeing his furniture being moved in, becomes immediately intrigued. From this point on her character is frequently portrayed making all attempts possible to hear Stephan's beautiful melodies floating from his piano into her apartment. Soon however Lisa's mother finds a man who she decides to marry, and the family is going to move to a new city. While waiting for the train with her family, Lisa's infatuation gets the best of her, and in a moment she is on her way back to her old home. When back in Vienna Lisa finds a job and makes daily attempts to get a glimpse of her secret love. When she finally manages to grab Stephan's attention, he manages to charm her even more, and that night they go out on a date. After a romantic dinner and night in the Vienna amusement park, they return to his apartment together and conceive a son. The following day, Stephan finds her working at the dress shop and asks to speak to her when she finishes work. Lisa soon finds out that he is leaving for a concert, but he promises that he will return to her in two weeks. Because of her blinding love for Stephan she trusts his word, but to her dismay he never returns to her. Eventually she moves on with life, marrying a military officer who loves her, supports her, and even takes her son in treating him as he would his own. Stephan enters the story again when the couple attends a concert one night. Lisa notices Stephan quickly and feels the passion returning, but does not want to recognize it so she pretends to be ill hoping to get home before he sees her. Perhaps she knew that if they meet again she would not be able to control her feelings, but Stephan eyes her leaving and catches her before she does. Once back at home with her husband, she realizes she must go see Stephan one more time. When they are together it seems for a small amount of time that he remembers who she is, but after Stephan uses the same lines he did before, she realizes that he has forgotten her. Knowing that her love was not returned she leaves before he can return with the drink he had promised her. Only when he receives a letter does he realize that she had been carrying his son and had loved him her entire life. Lisa's husband is knocking on the door as the movie comes to a close looking for a duel to defend the honor of his late wife and her dead son. It is only when Stephan realizes the folly of his ways that Stephan chooses to accept his fate and join his family in death.Though terribly sad and ironic, this film shows the true power of love, whether it is reciprocated or not. Lisa lived her whole life for Stephan, and in the end lost everything because of it. Stephan on the other hand never realized what he had in her until it was gone. After learning what he had done, he must have found that there was no reason to live any longer. Finally, the soldier who truly loved Lisa also realized that his love would never be enough, losing his wife to another man and ultimately to a terrible disease. Ophüls' film is a wonderful love story that illuminates the delights and perils that true love often contains.

sandover I guess Mr. Zweig had not read psychoanalyst Darian Leader's book "Why do women write more letters than they post?" when he put his pen down; or maybe, despite the different time zone he did and decided to invert and take things a bit too literally. To make things as concise as possible, what is one of the arguments of the book, is that women question the addressee more than men do, and something cannot be put down in a woman's love letter, that is why what the title says happens.Mr. Zweig opts for the grand gesture of having one woman writing arguably just one letter in her life and sending it despite all odds; it seems that in her case nothing is lacking, even if her obsession with her object of love has significantly broken down. Most of the viewers already know how the story goes, yet let's take a step back.In a nutshell, what we see on screen is the narrative of a life-long infatuation with a man from a woman on the brink of death: she tells the story of her life as seen from early womanhood to early middle age and as seen through her encounters with her at first neighbor and finally clueless stranger with whom she is totally in love and with no interruption, even though he does not recognize her and even though she has his child.This pure 19th century gazette schlock is nevertheless pursued by Ophuls with undiminished gusto, finesse as if wrenching up all embellishment and turn of rondo and waltz to make the film into some kind of march with head up into deadly melodrama; he gives this second rate story its glorious second fate on screen.I will be a bit more precise: I find Mr. Zweig an unbearable bore; to play it Viennese-style he knows not what sostenuto and what legato is: all comes flat in his hand, if one has read some of his books, with all the humanist alibi already cracking after WWI.What I mean by this is that we are only once involved actively and empathetically in the film, and that happens when Lisa for once (and for all) staggers into the truth that the great pianist she has always loved not only does not remember her, but is an almost senile Don Juan babbling the same old story from woman to woman, from one nightly routine to the next. And here we may admire the team work shining through: Fontaine passes a glimpse of pity and despair through the recognition of what Stefan really is, that is pity for him and a despairing self-esteem for her; Jourdan glides into his world-worn gags, and although he seems to me somewhat anxious throughout the film, he delivers a performance mixing up burdensome repetition and - what is truly great - making visible through his slightly lecherous character pity and terror.I am not so sure this stands for Fontaine; each time we see her older what strikes us is that her appearance is conceived in terms of visual metamorphosis, that is regarding age and lighting. Although there is a grand design in the conception, something is amiss when this steals the scene. It is also a case of involuntary irony when the male leader is the stealer as I think Louis Jourdan is and is supposed to be actually when you think of it, but maybe this is the crux of the matter: it is as if Mr. Zweig has stepped into the time when Don Juan cannot make his mechanisms go on, he suffers from repression, entering the Freudian era, courtesy of Mr. Zweig's friend Sigmund, that is why - as if the roles between old man and old world woman were inverted - his character is the one with the overflow of affected narcissism.All this may be great, but we do not have a book called "Zweig and his time", what we have is the definitive book on let's say what Vienna was about,"Hofmannsthal and his time" which presents us the extra spritzy operatic and far more complex ironies Mr. Zweig being a humanist/melodramatist lacks. If one has seen, say, "La Ronde" by the same Ophuls, after Schnitzler's (another Viennese) work, will recognize what the Viennese hell we are talking about the director and his actors simply being spontaneously tuned to such material.

dougdoepke Over a period of years, a young woman is gripped by a romantic obsession with tragic results.Despite the heavy romantic overlay, the movie strikes me as a one-of-a-kind noir. In fact, the production contains a number of noirish earmarks. Consider the foreboding nighttime atmosphere of so many scenes; also, the heavy sense of doom surrounding Lisa's obsession; then there's Stefan's seductive charm, a kind of spiderman in reverse. And while there's no crime in the legal sense, Stefan does commit a moral crime that leaves Lisa emotionally destitute. Nothing significant hangs on this classification, but it is a way of likening Lisa's predicament to noir's typically doomed characters and the dark universe they inhabit.Noir or not, the movie bears the clear stamp of an artistic sensibility thanks to director Ophuls, along with expert art design, set design, and cinematography. It's these formal qualities that lift the material above conventional soap opera. And though the screenplay seems pretty implausible at times, the device of the letter and Stefan's response to it create a beautifully rounded morality tale. Of course, having a 30-year old Fontaine play a teenager in the opening scenes is a stretch; however, Ophuls manages to finesse, using long and medium shots instead of revealing close-ups. Despite the difficult challenge, Fontaine manages to bring off her evolving role in persuasive fashion.All in all, the movie remains an exquisite combination of European sensibility and Hollywood professionalism. Together they produce an unforgettable visual and emotional experience that successfully challenges the condescending label of "a woman's picture".

Jackson Booth-Millard The 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book has been really useful for finding great films I probably would otherwise never have heard of or ever watch, and of course this one is another good example, from director Max Ophüls (The Reckless Moment). Basically set in 1900 Vienna, dashing former concert pianist Stefan Brand (Octopussy's Louis Jourdan) is planning to leave his flat to avoid a duel. Before this his manservant gives him a letter from an unknown woman, which he opens and reads, and through a series of flashbacks we see this woman, Lisa Berndle (Joan Fontaine). The letter is explaining that she had a lifelong passion for Stefan, starting from when she a young lady and he was her neighbour, she was fascinated with his music. Then when is an older woman she meets him properly and they have a short passion, and in the future she never revealed she had his child, and at one point she abandons her husbands and son to try and be with him. Somehow Stefan never remembers Lisa whenever they meet up, he does not even remember that they ever got together, seeing her this obviously breaks her heart. By the morning he has finished the letter by Lisa, and realised how much he has affected a life, it even said at the beginning by the time he read it that she may be dead, and her husband wants him to pay in the duel. Also starring Mady Christians as Frau Berndle, Marcel Journet as Johann Stauffer, Art Smith as John, Howard Freeman as Herr Kastner, John Good as Lt. Leopold Von Kaltnegger, Leo B. Pessin as Stefan Jr., Otto Waldis as Concierge, Erskine Sanford as Porter and Sonja Bryden as Frau Spitzer. Fontaine is really lovable as the woman who is never able to find true romance that she feels for her secret love, and Jourdan is charming as the man who never truly notices her enough, this is a really good insight into how sometimes love never goes all the way, and even chance meetings can create those kind of feelings, an interesting artistic style romantic melodrama. Very good!