An almost psychedelically luminous invocation of the Battle of Borodino set to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (1880). As Reisenbüchler put it: the film deals with “self-destruction in the power struggle for the conquest of empires”.
Pictures then of her family, accompanied by excruciating noise. The mother standing in front of the door, looking out of the window: the family enjoying its Sunday Lunch in a sombrely panelled room, at afternoon coffee, or breakfast together in bed. Dore O., always at the edge of things, dreamy absent, or suddenly intercut, a crouching figure on a bed, turning to and from with ...
A satire on the false happiness provided by consumer goods and bourgeois rituals done in an eye-poppingly gorgeous, extremely artificial style that ingeniously mixes colour with black and white, and combines live action with animation and even bits of puppetry!
Performace of Chopin's Valse Brilliante by Alexander Brailovsky, one of 2 classical soundies that Ophüls made in Paris.
As it comes from old VHS, some noises are detected, but I will put it for its rarity.
