Film Screening: Letter from an Unknown Woman

Gyaan Adab will invites you to a screening and discussion of the film ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ directed by Max Ophuls (USA, 1948) which is based on the novella of the same name by Stefan Zweig. The film will be introduced by Gayatri Chatterjee, who will also lead a discussion on the film after the screening.

About ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’:

The time: the very beginning of the twentieth century; place: Vienna.

The hero is the celebrated pianist Stephen Bard, quite decadent, not so much interested in music but only women. A young girl, Lisa has blossomed into womanhood secretly loving Stephen and bearing his child. But he has no idea of all this. One day he gets a letter from her, writing from her death bed. This is stuff a typical melodrama is made of. But on a close viewing we realize why Ophuls the great European master made it in Hollywood. He made this film four years after Stephen Zweig committed double suicide with his wife in Rio de Janerio in 1942. A discussion of this film would reveal why.

American philosopher Stanley Cavell has studied this film for over many years. Considered as one of the finest American films, Letter from an Unknown Woman is not just a melodrama but a commentary on the Western Civilization.

Gayatri Chatterjee is a film scholar based in Pune. She has taught and lectured widely in India, the USA and Europe. She is an external faculty at the Film & Television Institute of India. Her book ‘Awara’ (reissued by Penguin in 2003) won the President’s Gold medal (Swarna-Kamal) for the best book on cinema in 1992. Her book ‘Mother India’ (2002) belongs to the BFI film classics series of the British Film Institute. Gayatri’s articles have featured in several edited volumes published nationally and internationally.