Danielle Darrieux Videos : MADAME DE... (1953) -- The Dance

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MADAME DE... (1953) -- The Dance

An elegant roundelay of passion, charged with all the urgency of repressed desire. As two ill-fated lovers waltz, Ophuls seamlessly cuts and dissolves the world around them, layering emotional subtexts onto one another and completely disregarding time whilst remaining all too aware of the threat that it poses. Leaping from formality to informality, vacuity to cognizance and frivolity to love, this exquisite ballroom routine encapsulates the very spirit of the director's magnificent art: with the graceful choreography of his legendary camera, he articulates the value of pure sentiments in environments where they're all too frequently marginalised. Threatened from every angle by the superficiality and hypocrisy of an aristocracy thriving in the Belle Époque, the pair under scrutiny decamp to the safety of the dancefloor - an arena which Ophuls conceives as a transitory Utopia, with the dance itself now remoulded into the purest of unions between two earnest souls. An illusion, no doubt, but there's no other director who could so alluringly make one want to believe in the fallacy. reehanmiah.wordpress.com

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