Intriguingly, you won't find Max Ophüls' name anywhere in the credits, and the movie is listed as uncredited in his filmography. However, in some (but not all) posters of the time he is clearly identified as the director. The movie is the only one made by Ophüls in Italy (he had just fled Nazi Germany). It was commissioned by Angelo Rizzoli, editorial magnate and budding movie producer, who wanted to put on screen a novel by Salvator Gotta serialized in one of his newspapers. One may conjecture that Ophüls' name was erased from the credits to distribute the movie in Germany.

This is Ophüls' sixth film (excluding shorts) and he had already developed the innovative camerawork that he perfected in his later masterpieces: long takes, tracking shots that follow characters from room to room without cutting, 360 degree panning, multiple dissolves, elaborate flashback devices. A particularly striking sequence involves a shot/reverse shot of a conversation between a woman rowing a boat and a man driving a car on the shore. There are many brilliant scenes. The film opens with three clashes of cymbals on a dark screen, which turn out to be the beginning of a song being played on a phonograph. At the end, a character's demise is marked by presses stopping printing of her posters.

Unfortunately, Ophüls' skills are used in service of a script (adapted from Gotta's novel) so melodramatic it borders on soap opera. Acting is uneven. Isa Miranda, in one of her first roles is strangely detached and passionless and, in 1934 she was not young enough to play a teenager as she has to do briefly. Some of the other actors are over the top, perhaps trying to make something out of awkward lines.

All in all not a satisfactory movie, but Ophüls' artistry makes it worth watching. One of the initial credit screens informs us that the movie was given a prize for "technically best Italian film" in the 2nd Biennale di Venezia. Perhaps this is a just appreciation.

After the Action Horror thrills of Blind Woman's Curse (1970-also reviewed) I decided to check for other DVDs/ Blu-Ray's that I've been meaning to watch. Picking up this DVD a few years ago around Christmas,I felt it was time to play Gaby's record.

View on the film:

For their 100th presentation, Masters Of Cinema unveil a great transfer, with the pristine soundtrack and smooth print being backed by informative, detailed extras.

Laying on the cold steel hospital operating table comfortably numb after attempting to end her life,Isa Miranda gives an exquisite performance,in what was then only her third credit,as Gabby, whose current starry eye status as a celebrity is cracked by Miranda with subtle facial expressions and brittle body language, which perfectly captures the grinding down of optimism from Gabby's marked with deaths life.

Feeling a magnetic desire towards siren Gabby, Memo Benassi gives a great performance as Leonardo, whose passions for Gabby triggers the accidental death of his wife, which reverberates over the event looming over Gabby's life like a ghost.

Twirling from a record playing the last notes of Gabby's life, to the studio head, agents attempting to figure out how to keep their biggest star comfortably numb in order to be in working condition for the next big money making project, co-writer (with Curt Alexander & Hans Wilhelm) / directing auteur Max Ophuls closely works with cinematographer Ubaldo Arata and editor Ferdinando Maria Poggioli to compose poetry in motion across Gabby's life.

Sailing through the haze of Gabby under anesthetic towards an extended flashback, Ophuls brings into focus an immaculate, ultra-stylised, doom-laden Melodrama atmosphere, via long tracking shots towards Gabby's school days, which lands on a tragic romance which seeps across the rest of Gabby's life via mesmerizing superimpositions, gliding distorted shots, (reflecting the distortion of Gabby's image) stark, beautiful close-ups, and long panning shots down the shadows of death surrounding Gabby.

Adapting Salvatore Gotta's novel, the writers unveil a silky character study Melodrama, (a genre which Ophuls would explore across his credits) where the fragmented flashbacks and flashbacks within flashback superbly build a avalanche of tragedy which gradually builds up until the mass of heart break and death lands on Gabby.

This overblown romance prefigures such Hollywood melodramas as WRITTEN ON THE WIND, but, like Douglas Sirk's tale of life among the oil aristocracy, is redeemed by technique, in this case Ophuls' spirited use of moving camera.

Everyone in the cast chews the curtains with appetite, particularly Isa Miranda as Gaby, the neurasthenic movie star who, following one of her many collapses in the course of the film, re-experiences the key event of her life, an unhappy love affair with married magnate Leonardo which led to the accidental death of his invalid wife, and Gaby's subsequent guilty breakdown.

Nobody tracked or craned the camera with more flair than Ophuls, and he uses both techniques expertly in this film, often, it seems, for no motive more weighty than simple glee at his expertise. An insignificant conversation between Gaby in a rowboat on a sun-lit lake and Leonardo driving his convertible along the bank is elaborately staged as two long tracking shots, with Ophuls intercutting between them.

Similar flair marks the death of wheelchair-bound Alma, her shadow racing ahead of her along the floor as she pushes her chair to the head of the stairs, then teeters and falls. Other sequences are too spasmodic, in particular those at the film studio, with Gaby's cliché cigar-chewing agent negotiating a new contract with the equally stock studio head, and,later, Leonardo facing a hostile board that attacks him for neglect of the company.

Miranda is at her febrile worst in this film, and it demands considerable suspension of disbelief to accept as her married lover the overweight and stolid Memo Benassi, whose primary acting technique is to stare into the middle distance and fire up another cigarette. But any enthusiast for Ophuls' fluid camera will find the film a delight.