Letter from an unknown woman

On the eve of the twentieth century, playboy pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) returns home one night to find that he has received a letter from Lisa (Joan Fontaine), a woman he believes he does not know. As he reads, in flashback we see how the young Lisa, falling hopelessly in love with the talented but frivolous young man, captures his attention and spends one glorious night with him. Though he promises to return, he never does, and it is not till years later that they are to meet again. But Stefan does not remember, it’s only when he finishes the letter that he realises what he has lost, and that he truly comes to understand the bitter taste of lost hope and opportunity. In Ophul’s elegant mise-en-scene, melodrama is transformed into tragedy: it is not hyperbole to suggest that “Letter to an Unknown Woman” is cinema’s greatest study of the pain of unrequited love. Ophuls’ is the rare example of a male director whose immersion in the world of feminine emotion and passion is neither distanced by camp nor tainted by cynical misogyny. The sumptuous recreation of turn-of-the-century Vienna, the meticulous art design; all point to the director’s commitment to do justice to the sacrifices, the tragedy, and the courage of a woman’s misdirected love.