Director Max Ophuls is best known for four films made in France following a war imposed exile to Hollywood, films that examine the decadence and sexual politics of turn-of-the-century Paris with a mixture of candid frankness and dreamy artificiality, thanks to a moving camera that seems to float through space on the wings of cherubs. “La Ronde”, an endlessly fascinating comedy about the interconnecting affairs of ten or so characters, each one connected by one lover from a previous segment, was the first of these four career defining films for Ophuls, and given the meticulous structure of the very first shot – five unbroken minutes of visual perfection, as Anton Walbrook as narrator/host glides us into the narrative from a roundelay, through a foggy street set, dappled with anachronistic Mitchell cameras and arc lights, back to early 1900’s Paris – you can tell from the get go Ophuls was at home and in his element without the interference of American producers. The camera never seems to stop moving, with tracking shots as gorgeous as the cast of stars it’s filming (including Simone Signoret, Danielle Darrieux, Daniel Gelin, Simone Simon, and Isa Miranda), and with light touches of bawdy humor (Walbrook literally snips out a censored sex scene in a bit of hilarious Ophulsian self reflexivity), and sweeping Oscar Straus music, this is one fabulously entertaining film from France’s Forgotten Fifties – post Golden Age, pre New Wave.