AutCuddly
Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Freeman
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
FilmCriticLalitRao
'La Ronde' occupies a special place in the filmography of Max Ophuls. Before this film nobody had dared to carry out an extensive study about love and sex. It is not a mere coincidence that 'La Ronde' finds some sort of an echo in the writings of Italian writer Alberto Moravia. According to him there can be sex without love but hardly sentimental love without sex. Max Ophuls shows the thin line which separates love from sex. It is a marker used by him to differentiate between various dichotomies namely rich and poor, sacred and obscene. The Facial expressions of all actors have been nicely filmed as their frustrations are clearly visible. While watching different episodes of 'La Ronde', viewers are constantly reminded of the fact that the notion of love does not remain same in the context of a relationship between a man and a woman. Lastly, 'La Ronde' remains a grim reminder of the fact that social conventions were challenged and a lot of people from all strata of society were involved in the spreading of illicit love. All this happened at a time when nobody was alien to other person's secrets.
evening1
A gem of a film."The Round" seems to be telling us that love is fickle, cruel, painful, disappointing, playful, and puzzling -- it all depends on who's sleeping with whom.Seamlessly joined by the suave songs of a top-hatted narrator, these tales vary somewhat in their interest and quality. None reaches the poignancy of the second tale, in which a simple girl is loved and left by a cad in uniform. Other stories approached tedium, like the one involving the chambermaid and a wealthy scion.In all, they manage to form a satisfying whole. Unique!
blanche-2
French stars of the day abound in "La Ronde," Max Ophuls ode to love in the Vienna of 1900. Anton Walbrook serves as narrator and plays some small roles in the various vignettes, which star Simone Signoret, Simone Simon, Serge Reggiani, Danielle Darrieux, Ferdinand Gravey, Jean-Louis Barrault, Isa Miranda, and Gerard Philip - quite a cast.Using the image of the carousel, the narrator takes us through a series of love/lust stories which by 1950 standards are at times very explicit, so much so that the film wasn't released in the U.S. until 1954, though its original release to other countries was in 1950. There is prostitution, adultery, performance anxiety, an older man with practically a teenager, and an older woman/younger man scenario.Employing a beautiful, catchy theme by Oscar Strauss, "La Ronde" is lyrical with lovely performances, and certainly nothing like the films it inspired - Vadim's remake and also the later "Chain of Desire" (not one of my favorites). Some of the stories are short, some not as good, but they all are infused with charm, humor, fluidity, and beautiful atmosphere and detail of the period.Though not in the Orphuls version, which emphasizes love and sex with the narrator's cynical and amused view, the original play has to do with the spread of STDs, a theme picked up in "Chain of Desire." "La Ronde," however, is all about pleasure and fun.
Dae
Any individual so facile, so without even the very fundamental tools of perception required to grasp the absurdity of attacking Godard's 'Style' should be quite fully dismissed, their ludicrously fecund assertions with them. Such an individual is one who can only assumed to have never watched a film by either Godard or Ophuls, lest he might have realised the supreme irrelevance of inconsequential Godardisms on a remarkable body of work. So contemptible do I find the incestuously journalistic tripe that this user feels necessary to fob off as critique that, as evidenced, I was move to address it directly, to commit the marked hypocrisy of failing to attend the work itself. You are fortunate then that several other passably fair views of the work, not one that one need think more than once about seeing at the nearest opportunity, exist on this very page.All we need now is a decent DVD release.
