A victim of respectable but somewhat patronizing reviews at the time of its original release, Letter from an Unknown Woman has achieved classic status during the past two decades, both as one of the best examples of what used to be called "the woman's picture," and as an impressive showcase for the camera wizardry that distinguished Max Ophuls' direction. "Max and his tracks" were legendary, and the Ophuls tracking shot would follow the characters into rooms, out of rooms, and through the walls of rooms as if the cameraman had the mobility of a ghost. In Ophuls' second American film (Caught and The Reckless Moment would follow), Joan Fontaine, an actress who seemed to make a specialty out of aggressive docility, portrays an obsessive young woman who builds her whole life around a passion for a concert pianist (Louis Jourdan) who is barely aware of her existence. The story of lifelong, unrequited love, told via a posthumous letter, in being almost absurd is more cynical than it is romantic. Andrew Sarris wrote of Ophuls: "Love, the memory of love, the mortality of love comprise the Ophulsian heritage...(and) Ophuls offers no...comforting consolation... There is no escape from the trap of time... This is the ultimate meaning of Ophulsian camera movement: time has no stop..."