Abandoning journalism for the theater, Max Oppenheim changed his name to Max Ophüls so as not to embarrass his father, a German-Jewish garment manufacturer, if he failed. An actor from 1919, Ophüls turned to directing in 1924. Two years later he took creative charge of Vienna's Burgtheater, offering an exhaustive repertory of Austrian, German, Russian, French and English classics. Ophuls had 200 plays to his credit at the time he entered films, in 1929, as dialogue director for UFA's Anatole Litvak. He made his own movie directorial debut with 1930's Dans schon lieber Lebertran. The best of his early films was Liebelei (1932) which included several elements that would distinguish his later work, including lavish settings, a pro-feminist viewpoint, and a climactic duel between an older and younger man. Ever keeping his ear to the ground, Ophüls left Germany after the 1932 Reichstag fire, accurately predicting that the now-inevitable Nazi takeover would be disastrous to him both personally and artistically. From 1933 through 1940, Ophüls directed a steady stream of profitable but forgettable films in France, Italy, Holland and Russia. He became a French citizen in 1938, only to be forced out of his adopted country by (again) the Nazis in 1940. He relocated to Hollywood in 1941, languishing there without work until he was rescued by his longtime admirer, director Preston Sturges. Through Sturges' intervention, Ophüls (billed as Opuls on his American productions) was one of several directors hired to make sense of the benighted…  » Read more