Letter from an Unknown Woman
What can I say, I loved the film. Just yesterday, I have read the book, and I find it astonishing how well the adaptation touches the original atmosphere of the book. So, there are a few deviations but those are so minimal and of such non-existent importance. Even the chronology and a lot of lines have been directed ported into the female narrator’s voice. While it might sound surprising (considering how the setting was changed from Vienna of the 1920s into Beijing of the 1930s and 40s), I find it very explicable how it is possible to transport the very essence of the story including most of its text into a film adaptation set in China.
First of all, the main character does not relate much to her time, she is mostly a thoroughly timeless character and whose love has no boundaries, especially not her environment. Everything in the world is him, and he – as a character – is never going to change. The whole story could just take place with a famous actor or pop singer today and the Unknown Woman’s love would still feel exactly the same.
Second, and most importantly, you can see how much admiration the makers of the film have for the book. I have known beforehand that Stefan Zweig’s colorful and slightly kitsch style is very, very popular in Asia; it’s just the type of romanticism that Asian people seem to like. I even find the Chinese translation of the lines of the book to be even more beautiful than the original German, which already heaviness and melancholy. To me, it seems that it’s very easy to transport these kinds of feelings into an Asian language: The Chinese language has so many words that differentiate different types of love, and also puts an emphasis on the heaviness of such a love. At some point, the Unknown Woman says that she fell in love with him at first sight. „Love at first sight“ has a very common expression in Chinese (which, of course, has 4 words), but in Chinese, it does not only say „love“ but it says „endless love at first sight“, with the word for love expressing the type of love which designates lovers on a passionate, sexual, romantic basis. It means that you have very deeply fallen in love with someone at first sight – forever. In Chinese, that expression has the connotation of being a very heavy and desperate burden rather than some happy and romantic illusion which might fade. Asian cultures have this ideal of unconditional, eternal and immensely strong love, and they cherish this love and make tributes to them in their movies („Dolls“ is also a brilliant example).
With that said, it does not surprise that the Ophüls version from 1948 is supposedly less faithful to the original book, because the Unknown Woman takes some sort of revenge on the author. It makes her more realistic and gives her masochistic character another more human, and perhaps also deeper psychological level. But it is not what happens in the book.
What can I say, I loved the novel and I was prepared to love the film, which I did in the end. It is also interesting to see what different kinds of impacts film and book make on me. While the book puts the Unknown Woman’s thoughts into words and makes them understandable for us, the film mostly shows her expressions and her movements. All in all, the book made me much more emotional because I felt like those words were just there, on my lips, but I am unable to put such thoughts into words; the book gave me the feeling to ‚be‘ that woman and to love such a man. However, it was the film that touched to the verge of crying. While I have found the majority of the film beautiful instead of heavy and melancholic, I thought that the very last scene, in which the Unknown Woman meets the old servant, was indescribably sad. Throughout those years, she has become a stunningly beautiful woman who walks out with expensive jewels and a marvelous dress, and it is in that moment that she has to face the hardest situation in her life. It is in that moment only that it dawned on me how immensely sad her fate is, and I felt tears in my eyes.
Finally, I cannot say that I recommend this movie, because it really is not the type of film that you have to see if you are not interested in the topic at all. It is indeed very stylish with many beautiful shots with old Chinese houses, cities and landscapes, and Xu Jinglei is a wonderful actress who is amazing at subtly transporting feelings. The film deserves its award in San Sebastian absolutely. It totally is my type of movie and it does what it wants to do brilliantly, but I would not put it onto my list of best movies ever.
The things this movie deserves even more are a high-quality DVD and subtitles that don’t feel like they were translated by a Chinese high-school kid…
Apart from that it really is interesting how incredibly Asian the story feels and right now, still not having read the original story, I couldn’t possibly imagine a European setting.
The shooting really was brilliant, as were the costumes as they really managed to underline her personality in the different stages of the story. The scene with the old servant was incredibly touching, sad and so deliciously subtle; she really is a great actress!
Most importantly: she looked like Shiina Ringo in the last part and incredibly Moon-womanish throughout the whole movie. XD