Max Ophuls

The Profile

Max Ophüls (1902–1957) was a German-born film director known for elegant tracking shots, complex female protagonists, and films such as Caught, La Ronde, The Earrings of Madame de..., and Lola Montès.

Fled Nazi Germany and worked in Hollywood in the 1940s; renowned for long takes, gliding camera movements, and melodramatic focus on women's interior lives.

DeBaser hosts a single review of Max Ophuls' Caught that praises his elegiac camera moves and complex heroines. The review situates Ophuls as a European émigré director who worked in Hollywood in the 1940s. Caught (1949) is described as an anti-Pretty Woman, exposing marriage as a gilded trap. The review recommends viewing the film (available on Internet Archive).