The transience of love, the intransigence of memory, the circular nature of time: these are not easy things to film, but Max Ophuls filmed almost nothing but love, time, and memory in his richly imagined dramas. Master of the fluid image, wizard with the crane and dolly shot, "Max and his tracks" would follow the characters in and out of rooms, up and down staircases, through walls and time as if the camera had the mobility of a spirit. His period films are almost obsessively set amid turn-of-the-century European splendor, the better to show themselves to be "only superficially superficial" (to borrow Charles Boyers's phrase from The Earrings of Madame de...). Their delights and tactile pleasures give way to themes both more transcendent and more troubling, with a radically sensitive depiction of women at the center.Our tribute to Max Ophuls (1902-1957) tracks a career that traveled, stopped, circled back, much like his movies; exile made the screen his only home. Born in Germany, he wanted to be an actor, quickly found he wasn't one, became a director, and never looked back (off screen, that is). Forced out of Germany, he worked in France; forced out of Occupation France, he worked in Hollywood; at the top of his form, he returned to France and went even higher, with The Earrings of Madame de..., La Ronde, and Lola Montès.The pleasures of Ophuls are the pleasures of cinema itself, the dizzying power of the visual to transport us through time into emotion. This is cinema, to the Max. This series is sponsored by the Consulate General of France, San Francisco; the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Goethe-Institut; InterNationes; the Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco; and Lufthansa.We are grateful to Stefan Altevogt, Amelia Antonucci, Bernard Benoliel, Ian Birnie, Emmanuel Delloye, Bryony Dixon, Ingrid Eggers, Veronique Godard, Arja Grandia, Charles Hopkins, Kent Jones, Waltraud Loges, James Quandt, Peter Scarlet, Dieta Sixt, and Heather Stewart.We thank the British Film Institute; Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Munich Filmmuseum; Nederlands Filmmuseum, and UCLA Film and Television Archive. Friday September 17, 1999