LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN

This 1948 film is a perfect example of the type of romantic melodrama that was made by Hollywood at its peak: take a fine piece of literature (a novella by Stefan Zweig), make a few alterations here and there to make it more palatable for its target audience and for the censor,  and then hand it over to Max Ophüls, a director known for his lyrical visual style and for his affinity to romantic themes.

It cannot fail to succeed, and broadly speaking it doesn't, provided one is in the right mood.  

It's set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, where Stefan (Louis Jourdan) is about to flee in order to avoid certain death in a duel.  But then he gets side tracked into reading a letter from Lisa (Joan Fontaine), which is a cue for her to narrate the rest of the film in a series of flashbacks.

She starts off as a teenager who develops a crush on handsome Stefan, a talented pianist who lives in the next-door apartment.  He of course barely notices her.

She is so obsessed with him that when her parents move to Linz she rejects the offer of marriage by a perfectly acceptable suitor and returns to Vienna, where she spends her nights hanging around Stefan's apartment block.

Then one night he spots her, they talk, they spend a long magical evening together, dining, visiting an amusement park, dancing, before he takes her home and they kiss.

Soon after he has to leave for a couple of weeks, promising to return, but would you believe it, he doesn't.  And it turns out they did more than kiss, because she's pregnant.

Flashforward ten years and Lisa is married to an older man, a general, who's happy to be a stepfather to young Stefan Jr.

Unfortunately Lisa bumps into Stefan Sr at the opera, and despite the passage of time she feels compelled to throw away her marriage because of her love for him.  However she discovers how foolish she is being when she goes to his apartment and she realises how little she meant to him because he doesn't remember their previous meeting.

The final tragic twist in the tale is that she and her son both caught typhus when she saw him off at the train station, and they both die.  Stefan Sr is distraught by the time he finishes the letter (written from her deathbed), and resignedly leaves his apartment to attend his duel with Lisa's husband.

Summarised like this the story might seem ridiculous, and I suspect that the alterations to Zweig's novella haven't done it any favours.  I certainly found it difficult to believe Stefan wouldn't recognise her, even after ten years.  And the least said about the contracting of typhus the better.

However there's no denying the skill with which this 'weepie' (to use a somewhat pejorative term) is put together, and the way Vienna of that period is evoked.

Joan Fontaine was a remarkably successful actress of the 1940s.  Although she complained about always playing 'sad sacks', there was a good reason why she tended to be cast in this type of role, and this film is another example, along with 'Rebecca' and 'Suspicion', of her being perfectly cast.