Letter from an Unknown Woman

1948

Drama / Romance

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 85% · 25 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 85% · 5K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.8/10 10 14713 14.7K

love of one's life anonymous letter ignorance author duel vienna, austria

Plot summary

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forced to reinterpret his own past.

Director

Max Ophüls Photo
Max Ophüls

Top cast

Joan Fontaine Photo
Joan Fontaine as Lisa Berndle
Betty Blythe Photo
Betty Blythe as Frau Kohner
Curt Furburg Photo
Curt Furburg as Butler
John Elliott Photo
John Elliott as Flower Vendor
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
803.67 MB
986*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 27 min
Seeds 1
1.46 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 27 min
Seeds 14

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by FilmCriticLalitRao 8 / 10

Lettre D'Une Inconnue : Max Ophuls films the tribulations of a woman in love !!!!

Based on Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's novella 'Brief Einer Unbekannten', Ophuls uses all his creativity at disposal to enable his technicians to capture the cowardice of men and vulnerability of women. It is not only the leading pair who serves as a good example of cowards and vulnerable people. There are also some secondary characters who provide fitting description to words such as coward and vulnerable. The names of the woman's mother and her husband come to mind to provide a suitable description. In 'Letter from an unknown woman', Max Ophuls celebrates the immense power of a letter to convey feelings of disappointment arising out of a failed love affair. The letter in question is quite a long one. It was drafted by a woman to tell her doomed life to her lover. Ophuls depicts all the troubles which a woman is compelled to take in order to get love. It would not be wrong to state that love is out of fashion in current times. It has been replaced by something which resembles love but has a certain amount of physical force. There were times in the past when intense feelings of love were appreciated. 'Letter from an unknown woman" is one such film which has the ability to transport viewers to a time when love mattered a lot.
Reviewed by for_the_ages 9 / 10

Such a terrifically melancholy romance

This movie is really great in how it conjures up so much tasteful melodrama through its structure and the unique way in that the main characters spend less time on screen together interacting than they do just being painfully tragic.I really enjoy the structure of the piece, through the title letter which gives a sense of dated urgency if that makes any sense. We read along with the man who also doesn't not really know the whole story, and so we see through her eyes in a fresh sense his being while discovering the story along with him. It is an interesting way of making the movie. Fontaine is wonderfully vulnerable and believable as a woman who tries and tries and tries and matures and regresses through decades of life. My favorite part of course is the lovely "train ride" through different vistas, its cutesy but also a comment on how their romance is so supercilious to him but everything to her, in a fake box car. Depression may occur after viewing this film.
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