Cinema
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Max Ophüls · 1948
Synopsis
Vienna, around 1900. The pianist Stefan Brand comes home late at night, determined to flee the duel awaiting him in the morning. His mute servant hands him a long letter from a woman he does not remember. In it she tells how, as a teenager, she fell in love with him when he came to live in her building, listening to his rehearsals and watching for his comings and goings, and then how her mother, remarried, took her away to Linz.
Context
The film adapts Stefan Zweig's novella published in 1922; Howard Koch wrote the screenplay with Ophüls, giving the characters names and making the hero a pianist, whereas Zweig made him a writer. It was produced by John Houseman for Rampart, the company founded by Joan Fontaine, who plays the lead, and her husband William Dozier. Shot at Universal studios from August to October 1947, it was released in New York on 28 April 1948 and in France on 5 November of the same year.
Who it is for
A black-and-white melodrama of a little under an hour and a half, told almost entirely from the letter.
Prizes and reception
Entered in 1992 in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, it was presented at Cannes Classics in 2021.