(Max Ophüls, France 1940, 91 min., 35mm nitrate print)
Director: Max Ophüls
Writers: Carl Zuckmayer, Marcel Maurette, Curt Alexander, André-Paul Antoine, Jacques
Natanson
Producer: Eugène Tucherer
Cinematographers: Curt Courant, Otto Heller, supervised by Eugen Schüfftan
Set designer: Jean d’Eaubonne
Costume designer: Boris Bilinsky
Music: Oscar Straus
Cast: Edwige Feuillère, John Lodge, Aimé Clariond, Jean Worms, Jean Debucourt, Raymond
Aimos, Gabrielle Dorziat, Henri Bosc, Gaston Dubosc, Marcel André, Eddy Debray, Jacques
Roussel, Colette Régis, Silvain Itkine, Jacqueline Marsan, Henri Beaulieu
Production company: B.U.P. Française
Sound, b/w, 91 min.
French language, German subtitles, electronic English subtitles
Print source: Cinémathèque suisse, Lausanne, Switzerland
De Mayerling à Sarajevo became something of a World War II casualty. Director Max Ophüls
was drafted into the French army at the beginning of the war, and the production had to be
abandoned. Later, Ophüls was granted leave to finish the film, which he did with other things on
this mind. He never returned to the army and had to flee first Paris and then France, and he did
not complete another film until Exile (1947), which marked the beginning of his US career.
A true cosmopolitan who made significant contributions to German, Dutch, French, and
American cinema, Ophüls blended cinematic traditions. Sarajevo—as the picture was called in
English-speaking countries to distinguish it from Anatole Litvak’s Mayerling (1936), on whose
success Ophüls capitalized—marks the end of his first French period. While Litvak’s film was a
melodrama in its purest form, Ophüls used a melodramatic plot to condemn and ridicule politics.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire had been mythologized by filmmakers, but if there are footsteps
Ophüls was following, they are Eric von Stroheim’s.
As in Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928), Sarajevo demonstrates sophisticated editing which
seems to separate the lovers and deprive them of intimacy much more effectively than the
intrigues of the court. The camera floats and dances around lavish sets, uniforms, dresses,
jewelry, and candle flames, anticipating Ophüls’s signature tracking shots of the 1950s, yet the
cinematic techniques are limited to simple over-the-shoulder shots whenever any of the
characters allow themselves to express genuine feelings.
The film received limited distribution and moderate praise from critics remaining in the occupied
country. In the 1950s, when Cahiers du cinéma proclaimed Ophüls a great auteur, Sarajevo was
dismissed as crude. Five decades passed, and it was reevaluated as an important step in the
evolution of Ophüls’s style.
Quoting the director’s first biographer, Claude Beylie, “[Sarajevo] is certainly the least finished
of Ophüls’s films, the one where the usual harmonious rolling is replaced by rough bumps; but
the carriage’s lacquer is not devoid of shine.” This literally applies to this original Swiss release
print, which is of remarkable photographic quality. Its many scratches and a high splice count
(81) are signs of a successful screening life. Shrinkage is fairly low at 0.4%-0.7%. There is much
to admire in this unjustly neglected film, but the “nitrate magic” of the print deserves an
appreciation of its own.
Peter Bagrov