Le Plaisir · reception & legacy
1952 · Max Ophüls
How Le Plaisir has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A commercial disappointment in France in 1952 — audiences found its blend of gaiety and cruelty unsettling — it's since risen to sit alongside The Earrings of Madame de... at the summit of Ophüls' reputation, helped by restorations and decades of filmmaker worship.
What's debated
The eternal Letterboxd debate: is the long middle 'Maison Tellier' section the masterpiece, or do the short, brutal bookends actually land harder — the classic anthology-film ranking argument.
Its footprint
Its most famous champion is Stanley Kubrick, who reportedly called it his favourite film, and its swooping, wall-piercing camera moves — especially the shot climbing the house's façade, peeking window to window — are endlessly cited as the purest example of the Ophüls tracking shot. Its closing line, 'le bonheur n'est pas gai' ('happiness is not gay'), is one of cinema's great quotable sign-offs.
Where it stands
Firm cinephile canon rather than a casual watch — the Ophüls film that camera-movement obsessives and filmmakers press on you as a 'you must see this'.