La Ronde

(1950)

The agency of storytelling is something the majority of filmmakers would want you to forget exists. In LA RONDE, Max Ophuls makes it the basis of an entire film. Starting with a five-minute take which deftly and imaginatively straddles various definitions of cinema as life, theatre, and carousel, authorship appears in several personified disguises to nudge, escort, and manipulate characters to a set point of departure in the narrative timeline. Rather than feign modesty at the elision of sex scenes, the director reminds us that screen representation is shaped by the social norms and conventions of the time and place in which cinema is produced. Erectile dysfunction manifests as a malfunctioning carnival ride and the beginning of intercourse abruptly cuts to the narrator slicing up and reassembling strips of film with a pair of scissors, muttering, “Censored … censored.” If this all sounds frivolously meta-textual – and in other hands it absolutely could be – consider the depth and complexity with which Ophuls’ portrays the relationships between characters, them and the world, and the world and the filmmaking process. The titular “la ronde” is the guiding metaphor for the narration, its motion resembling the endlessly spinning reel of celluloid exhibition at the time. A restaurant in which characters meet that encompasses many rooms and floors of a building provides just as much perspective, varying the levels of detachment and sympathy for the characters so the audience can code-switch between intense personal intimacy and holistic existential distance. Cinema as thinking and feeling simultaneously.