Watch Lola Montès For Free

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The first must-see film of the year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

It is a great shame that Max Ophuls only made one colour wide-screen movie - this one. The master of the tracking shot might have done so much more but this was his last completed movie.The scenes are mostly well-directed and beautifully photographed but the main problem with "Lola Montès" is Lola. It is impossible for the viewer to understand how this plain, charmless woman (underplayed by Martine Carol) could seduce and inspire composers and kings. Where is the beauty, the sexiness, the vivacity of Lola? I am not asking for a documentary but the real life story of Lola is so much more interesting. I know that Ophuls is commenting on the downside of celebrity - Lola wants to be a star and ends up in a circus (if Ophuls made this today, Lola would appear in a TV "reality" show or sex tape) - but without a compelling central character the spectacle falls as flat as the cardboard cutouts of Lola.

In the Nineteenth Century, the Irish born dancer Lola Montès (Martine Carol) was the lover of many famous men, including Franz Liszt and the King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Countess of Landsfeld. With a revolutionary movement, she flees from Munich and travels to the United States of America. She is hired by the Circus Master (Peter Ustinov) that tells her scandalous love affairs in every show and she becomes the lead attraction of the circus. "Lola Montès" is not my favorite Max Ophüls film, but it is certainly his best work of cinematography, costumes and art decoration. The restored DVD highlights these aspects and it recalls Luchino Visconti style. However, the narrative of the life of the most scandalous European woman of the Nineteenth Century is tiresome in many moments. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Lola Montèz"

Watching "Lola Montes" often feels like rollerskating up and down hilly streets lined with sumptuously designed department store windows. At other times you would swear that Josef von Sternberg made a 50s comeback in color, so packed are the frames and so obstructed are the sightlines; the only thing missing is the Sternbergian close-ups. Then you might wonder if Bertolt Brecht had a hand in the screenplay, so alienated are we from the emotional core of this woman's life.The film seesaws between a circus act starring the middle-aged title character (Martine Carol) and flashbacks to her past. In the circus setting, ringmaster Peter Ustinov presents a series of impossibly lavish tableaux which depict points in Montes's scandalous life. The flashbacks include her first marriage, her dalliance with King Ludwig I of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook), and her relationship with a Bavarian student (Oskar Werner). In reality, Montes never appeared as the star of such a circus act, but this film's creators have chosen to present her life in these terms in order to cast her as a metaphor of the celebrity freak, no different in essence from a circus animal who jumps through hoops or a daredevil who engages in public spectacle. She is almost always seen from a distance, as if to emphasize her actual insignificance. The parallels to our contemporary celebrity culture are obvious.But beyond this commentary on celebrity and the technical virtuosity of the busy sets and panning camera, there is nothing much here. There is certainly no compelling drama. The central character is so distanced from the viewer that she can only be grasped as a concept, not as a human being.And I have to agree with others that Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" comes to mind, but even that endless Carnival Cruise Ship commercial had a clear central love story.

Restored to its original form for the first time since 1955, "Lola Montes" made an immediate impression on critics' circles nationwide after its screening at this year's New York Film Festival and for good reason: Max Ophuls' largely forgotten swan song is a work of art rooted in old-fashioned Romanticism, yet at the same time crafted with such cinematic power that its content and characterizations have barely aged.Directed by Ophuls and starring French actress Martine Carol in the leading role, "Lola Montes" is equal parts classical melodrama and groundbreaking cinematic exercise. Ophuls' camera glides effortlessly through the air, introducing us to the film's setting in grandiose fashion. As the circus sets the tone of artifice, flashbacks begin to act as the primary storytelling device: As the ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) promises "the most sensational act of the century," costumed performers take the stage to reenact the life of Lola Montes, the Irish-born dancer who set out to conquer the hearts of men.The film's depiction of Lola's brief tryst with renowned composer Franz Liszt is more or less true to history. So is her well-documented seduction of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, a relationship that eventually led to the latter's fall from grace and abdication in the midst of revolution. A telling conversation between the two affirms "Lola Montes" as a tragic character study: "You like my dancing?" Lola asks eagerly, her eyes lighting up. The King's blunt answer all but encapsulates Ophuls' flawed-heroine subtext: "Not at all," he says. "But you know how to trigger a scandal, excite an audience. And that is the most important thing." Though the film feels significantly slow-paced for its two-hour running time, it is no short on content. Breaking away from conventional narrative structure is nothing new to Ophuls, and it is seen here in "Lola Montes" to an astonishing degree. Between the elegance of the flashback sequences and the squalidness of the circus, the film hints at the transient nature of time, blurring the distinction between memory and reality. The cyclical nature of the film reveals itself as Lola's relationships blossom as quickly as they deteriorate. In "Lola Montes", Ophuls presents the heroine as a woman to be reckoned with, a persona that in the end brings her both pleasure and despair.Yet there is still more about "Lola Montes" than what meets the eye. It is a director's film in the truest sense, and any evaluation of it should be taken in the light of the history of the medium itself. Ophuls himself alternated between a celebrated career and relative obscurity; though his cinematic contemporaries held "Lola Montes" in high regard, filmgoers at the time shunned it for what they perceived as a hollow and artificial attempt at commercial movie-making. Tellingly, both Ophuls and his subject are now more remembered for the dizzying heights they once reached than for the missteps that led to their intermittent downfalls.But no matter: scaling heights means next to nothing for femme fatales like Lola. In a key sequence near the end of the film, our heroine stands breathless at the top of the circus beams, her eyes vacant, devoid of seduction, starving for attention. As part of the final aerial act, Lola prepares to take a dangerous leap of faith. Will she accept the protective net underneath or risk her own safety by falling freely into a void of uncertainty, where life and death are equated by chance? The audience holds its breath for her response, but she leaves them hanging. What other choice, besides the riskier alternative, would one expect from Lola Montes?