While Criterion’s edition is light on extras, the fine presentation of the 4K restoration is worth the price alone.
This disc’s beautiful transfer attests to the undiluted aesthetic pull of Borzage’s paean to love conquering all.
Lubitsch’s film is a deceptively lighthearted exploration of class and gender issues in Britain on the brink of World War II.
This not-quite-stellar release proves that the Criterion Collection, like the heroes of Ophüls’s masterpiece, isn’t quite infallible.
Its heaven-on-Earth is revealed to be an intellectual safety-deposit box tucked away from a world ready to tear itself to shreds.
What is the famed “Lubitsch touch” if not the quiet thrill of being in on the joke?
Take Two #9: Love Affair (1939) & An Affair to Remember (1957), with Complaints About Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Superficial qualities aside, the movies are entirely the same, even line for line in many cases.
A majestic package fit for the film that would make Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris swoon in unison.
In the film, love triumphs over geography, the laws of coincidence, even a near Titanic-level disaster.
How about Cabin in the Cotten, Dangerous, Juarez, The Corn is Green, and A Stolen Life for volume four?
It's a beloved period costume drama, but in terms of visceral impact and camera movement, it’s an action flick.
Evanescence is an integral part of cinema, and no other director captured it as lyrically and yet as savagely as Max Ophüls.
Frank Borzage uses the best things about several genres here in order to make us feel their properties more intensely.
It’s rather like watching zee Frenchman kick zee puppy poodle for an hour and a half.
As Ingrid Bergman's music instructor might say to her in his early scene: "You look great but sound terrible."