Word: lola
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...incredible curving tracks which open Lola Montes establish first the ringmaster, then Lola at the center of the CinemaScope frame. While he walks around and pulls the camera after him, she is carried into the ring and set down in long shot--isolated in the frame and imprisoned by the camera sweeping around her. Ophuls' cutting in closer to her body, rather than tracking in (a surprising thing to do in CinemaScope, which is better adapted to long takes than to quick cutting), emphasizes her staticity, her closeness to death. But the camera motions, which express the glamor vital...
However, at the same time that the ringmaster presents her life's extravagance, beauty, and freedom, to the audience, Lola relives its desperation and compulsion. The camera movements of the first sequence ironically express both. Outwardly they, like the gaudy props, have a vulgar splendor and sweep. Lola, staggering backstage, mutters inwardly "My past's spinning in my head...
THIS IRONIC contradiction between supposed free will but actual determinism continues throughout. The first flashback's subject--the end of Lola's affair with Frantz Lizst--couls show her perfectly free (it's constantly filled, for example, with romantic music), and therefore like the heroes of Ophuls' early films. But Ophuls' static one-shots emphasize the separateness of the two lovers. Large objects in these shots' foregrounds express their estrangement. The characters' harmonious existence depends now entirely on their restraint, their good taste (Lizst, for example, being a musician). There is no exuberant, graceful triumph over surroundings; the first time...
...return to the circus takes Lola backstage to her dressing room, a cage behind which pass actors staging her childhood. The camera follows them back and forth, passing in the middle of each are the sick, static Lola, and provoking a second flashback. In it Lola, a child still mourning her father's death, accompanies her mother aboard ship only to discover her affair with an officer. The sweeping camera movements which follow this child through the ship and express her curiosity and longing, ironically stress the objects and walls that confine her movement through the cramped lower deck...
...following two flashbacks quickly close in on her. When Lola's mother tries to marry her off, Lola flees the opera house. Her small figure has a certain amount of free space in the balcony staircases down which she runs, but is ultimately imprisoned by the larger framework. Similarly, she can flee her immediate situation only by finally tying herself more tightly: by marrying. The next sequence shows her running from her husband's mansion. A track pushes her from the living room to the entranceway, where lattices and walls immediately before and behind her head lock her tightly...