It is a great shame that Max Ophuls only made one colour wide-screen movie - this one. The master of the tracking shot might have done so much more but this was his last completed movie.

The scenes are mostly well-directed and beautifully photographed but the main problem with "Lola Montès" is Lola. It is impossible for the viewer to understand how this plain, charmless woman (underplayed by Martine Carol) could seduce and inspire composers and kings. Where is the beauty, the sexiness, the vivacity of Lola?

I am not asking for a documentary but the real life story of Lola is so much more interesting. I know that Ophuls is commenting on the downside of celebrity - Lola wants to be a star and ends up in a circus (if Ophuls made this today, Lola would appear in a TV "reality" show or sex tape) - but without a compelling central character the spectacle falls as flat as the cardboard cutouts of Lola.

The framing conceit is Peter Ustinov as a circus ringmaster, putting Lola Montes on display, and charging money for each question asked of her, mostly concerning her affairs with famous men. In that register of celebrity, she rivals Alma Maria Schindler. As each question is asked -- "What was her youth like?" and so forth -- we get to watch a flashback and see her development into what Ustinov keeps calling a femme fatale.

It's in wide screen, the musical score is majestic, and the movie is splashed with colors varying in their degree of luridness. I kind of liked the decor. All that crimson Victorian-era flock or whatever it's called. A few more plastic ferns and beaded curtains and it would look like a 1910 Egyptian whorehouse or like my apartment, both settings being so similar.

Granted that a lot of imagination has gone into the production, as well as a lot of talent and money. I believe Picasso had imagination and talent too, but look what he produced. One magnificent panel of the bombing of a Spanish town, and the rest are stone-faced clowns or models with three breasts.

There has to be a point to the whole thing, and it must somehow involve the viewer. I don't think there was a moment I cared about what happened to Lola Montes. Her character is more marionette than seductress. And the dialog doesn't help. Franz Liszt: "It is better that we part this way." Lola: "Some day we will meet again, you at your concert and me on my stage." Liszt: "It will have to be a coincidence." Lola: "All of life is a coincidence." That's deeply profound.

I'm not bashing the movie because I didn't make it to the end, and evidently it has a lot of popular appeal, but I can't help wondering -- if it had been directed by someone named, say, Bruce Ophuls instead of Max, would it have had the same appeal?