La Ronde

Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophüls’s delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s controversial turn-of-the-century play Reigen. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, prostitutes, aristocrats—all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous as it is enchanting, and shot with Ophüls’s trademark mellifluous cinematography.