The Criterion Collection

It’s no surprise that Max Ophuls’s fashionable (and fashionably late to home video) Lola Montès, with its stunning sets and costumes, is featured in Vogue. In his review of the new Criterion edition of the glorious 1955 French film about the renowned courtesan (available in DVD and Blu-ray versions), critic John Powers calls it “a tour de force of baroque visual imagination . . . Ophuls swathes Lola in the raiment of his style, one of the most exquisite in movie history.”

Other reviews focus on the stunning clarity of the new transfer of this film, which had been lost and incomplete for decades before last year’s dazzling theatrical restoration, which is the version we present here. Home Theater Forum trumpets, “One of the legendary butchered classics from cinema’s past, Max Ophuls’s Lola Montès, in this new restoration, is something of a revelation,” and goes on to call it “a film of great beauty.” Meanwhile, the Blu-ray edition gets special shout-outs from DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze (“a glorious achievement”) and the folks at Blu-ray.com (“Anyone who has previously seen Lola Montès, theatrically or on SDVD, will be overwhelmed . . . It is marvelous!”).

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