Gaby Doriot’s new popular song “La signora di tutti” will be a hit in France, so her manager is negotiating a new contract with her film production company… The movie studio is bustling, but Gaby is nowhere to be found. Her manager checks her hotel, finding her on the bathroom floor: an apparent suicide attempt. At the hospital, as the anaesthetic is applied, Gaby flashes back to her life back home in Milan… At school, Gaby’s affair with a married teacher gets her expelled. She and her sister Anna are invited to a party by Roberto, the son of a well-to-do banker. He and Gaby plan to go to Rome together, but his father’s unexpected return sends him off alone. Gaby is on very good terms with Roberto’s invalid mother, but his father, Leonardo, is drawn to Gaby. —IMDb
Max Ophüls (born Maximillian Oppenheimer, 6 May 1902, Saarbrücken, Germany – 25 March 1957, Hamburg, Germany) was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany, the United States and France. He made nearly thirty films.
He started his career as a stage actor in 1919 but moved into theatre production in 1924. Two years later, he became creative director of the Burgtheater in Vienna and, having had 200 plays to his credit, turned to film production in 1929, when he became a dialogue director under Anatole Litvak at UFA in Berlin. He worked throughout Germany and directed his first film in 1931, the comedy short Dann schon lieber Lebertran (literally In This Case, Rather Cod-Liver Oil).
Of his early films, the most acclaimed is Liebelei (1933), which included a number of the characteristic elements for which he was to become known: luxurious sets, a feminist attitude, and a duel between a younger and older man.
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