mary mary why ya buggin'?
I wonder where some of your delusions on this film come from. Are you some uber-Catholic who believes married couples should always stay together even if there isn't really love in the marriage? Let's stay together for the kid...who doesn't even think of her husband as his father. While you're at it, you might wanna skip Garbo in Anna Karenina. You seem to be painting the husband as the poor wronged victim, but let's face it, he knew what he was getting into. Rare at the time or not, I don't see how he's so 'honorable' for raising another man's son so he can get with her mom. He may have been a good father to the son, but he knew his wife was like this and obsessed with this other man when he married her. Yes, she has some issues, but if she's a flake, what exactly is he? If you're going to condemn both of the leads, throw the husband into the pot too.
I don't think we're meant to really feel sympathy for the playboy musician with his numerous dalliances and his forgetfulness. Others in this topic already touched upon that. We really don't need to see Stefan's fate as it is pretty obvious: Duel between a career military officer and a has-been playboy musician, who do you think will win? I believe the term you were looking for is 'gyp' as a derogatory reference to 'gypsies' ripping people off.
The thing that annoyed me in the last 20 minutes of this film was *spoilers* the nature of the deaths of not just Lisa or not just her son, but BOTH of them who need to die in the film to give Stefan a slap in the face when he's done reading. I'm used to tragic deaths in movies romances, but I thought the method of killing them as a bit cheap. They catch typhus because some incompetent railroad workers forget to quarantine off that train car immediately after they know someone died in that car. The messages the film seems to be telling the audience are: 'Railroad workers are careless, incompetent morons' and 'don't ride trains', oh and possibly 'butlers probably shouldn't keep their forgetful employers in the dark'.
Overall, I liked the movie. I've also enjoyed The Earrings of Madame de..., La Ronde and Lola Montes. Ophuls doesn't have a movie in my top 100 yet, but 4/4 good movies is a pretty good track record so far. I need to get around to Le Plaisir still as well as the others.
If you want to talk movies where characters do frustratingly stupid things, there's always "Jules and Jim", which annoyed me to no end, though I had liked Jeanne Moreau in "Elevator to the Gallows".
P.S. Ballet history aside, you also seem to have mis-interpreted some things in The Red Shoes elsewhere.
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'Life is Beautiful' is to Holocaust movies what 'Twilight' is to vampire movies.
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