Arquivo

A sculptor is suspicious that his mistress is having an affair with another man, although she is already married to an absent-minded professor of biology who is ridicularized by the students. The lettering on the film contains not only the words spoken by the different characters, but also scoffs at their attitudes. There is complete use of mirrors with many of the close-ups showing fetishes for hands and feet, with takes from unusual angles. The blend of romance and a worldly existence among the upper classes, in operas and great concerts, was to be at a peak later in the films of Max Ophuls. There are also many similarities between Seduction and Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), by Ingmar Bergman, amongst which, melancholy and a discussion on the relationship between life and art. The scene from the opera, a parody on the decadent montage for ‘Salomé’, by Richard Strauss, has often been cited and copied, even by such as Busby Berkeley.