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MovieMail's Review
Ophuls' 1934 film soars above its plot of a standard-issue melodramatic weepie about a suicidal film star. Michael Brooke revels in a film anticipating Citizen Kane by nearly a decade.
On paper, this looks like a standard-issue melodramatic weepie about a suicidal film star Gaby Doriot (Isa Miranda) looking back on a life that mixed professional success and personal disaster, blighted by a succession of relationships with unsuitable men, two of whom are father and son.
But while Max Ophuls' early masterpiece (his only Italian film) isn't quite as aesthetically extravagant as his postwar classics, it's technically remarkable for 1934, with baroque visuals, a constantly prowling camera, overlapping dialogue and a complex flashback structure all anticipating Citizen Kane by nearly a decade. The film's title is also Gaby's nickname, 'Everybody's Lady', whose multiple meanings are thoroughly investigated - the film is at least as much a study of the fetishism that accompanies fame (and intense romantic passion) as it is a psychological portrait of a single individual.
Isa Miranda did rather better out of the film than her alter ego: it set her on the road to international stardom, and it's easy to see why she was subsequently billed as Italy's answer to Marlene Dietrich.
Beautiful new transfer from pristine film materials in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio
A new and exclusive video essay about the film by film scholar Tag Gallagher
Optional English subtitles
A lengthy booklet containing a new and exclusive essay on the film by filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet
and newly translated excerpts of an interview with star Isa Miranda, and remarks by director Max Ophuls.
Film Description
Frequently cited as one of Ophuls' greatest films, La Signora di Tutti stars the legendary Italian actress Isa Miranda in the part that made her a star.
With the Nazi terror on the ascent, master filmmaker Max Ophuls fled to Italy in 1934 and made La signora di tutti - an exuberant, desperate melodrama that, although arriving early in Ophuls' body of work, ranks comfortably alongside Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Earrings of Madame de..., or Lola Montès in the hierarchy of the director's achievements.
Isa Miranda plays the role of a star pressed to revisit the entire history of her lovers to the present moment through an inexorable web of flashbacks - brought on by the anaesthetic following a failed suicide attempt. From the record revolving on a turntable in the picture's opening moments, Ophuls sets into motion one of those roundelays with fate that he alone could pull off with such eminent elegance.
A precursor to the romantic themes that would culminate in Lola Montès, Ophuls' vertiginous La signora di tutti serves brilliantly as both a critique of one grande dame's own powerful narcissism, and an elevation of her glacial femininity to the level of sublime fetish.
The celebrated director Max Ophuls moved to Italy in 1934 and made La signora di tutti/Everybody's Lady -- an inventive melodrama that although more expressionist in t... more >
The celebrated director Max Ophuls moved to Italy in 1934 and made La signora di tutti/Everybody's Lady -- an inventive melodrama that although more expressionist in tone, ranks alongside such Ophuls classics as Letter from an Unknown Woman, Madame de... or Lola Montès. Isa Miranda is affecting in the role of a star forced - after a suicide attempt - to revisit the entire history of her lovers to the present moment through a dizzying procession of flashbacks. Ophuls' masterly (if melodramatic) La signora di tutti looks impeccable in this print. < less
-29901_5.jpg "La Signora di Tutti (Masters of Cinema) Film Still")
-29901_3.jpg "La Signora di Tutti (Masters of Cinema) Film Still")
-29901_2.jpg "La Signora di Tutti (Masters of Cinema) Film Still")
-29901_1.jpg "La Signora di Tutti (Masters of Cinema) Film Still")
