Lola Montès (1955)

Real life famous mistress of many well-known men Lola Montez, portrayed by the fantastic Martine Carol, is at last left to performing in a circus act that regales audiences with the details of her notorious life, which are told in flashbacks for movie viewers. While not my favorite of director Max Ophüls’s films that I’ve seen thus far, it presents a harsh take on celebrity, romance, and the treatment of women through the ages. The garish spectacle of the circus makes for a compelling parallel to Montez’s whirlwind life and a further parallel between how the men and world at large have treated her and so many others like her with the circus audience’s disregard for the humanity of the performers.