I've just saw a couple of Max Ophuls films and I'm amazed by the gracefull camera movement and rythm it contains. It's s bad that this kind of filmmaking seems to have vanished and replaced by MTV editing. I'll recommend the following Ophuls films:

THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE...
(1953; 105 minutes)
As the earrings of Madame de... take a treacherous route from one owner to the next, an entire world comes to life, the world of the French aristocracy during the Belle Èpoque, particularly the interior world shared by Madame de... (Danielle Darrieux), her rigid husband (Charles Boyer) and her soft, charming lover (Vittorio de Sica). Max Ophuls' masterpiece, easily one of the greatest films ever made, has all the trappings of romantic cinema, but its fluid camera takes us beyond the film's glittering surfaces ("only superficially superficial," as Boyer so aptly puts it) to the raw feelings surging beneath--and ultimately into the spiritually redemptive territory of grand passion. Darrieux, Boyer and de Sica did their greatest work in this towering film. "Perfection." -- Pauline Kael. 

LA RONDE 
(France, 1950; 97 minutes)
Even those unfamiliar with Ophuls' oeuvre know this much-imitated film, adapted from another Schnitzler play and initially banned from the USA due to its alleged "immorality." Comprised of a "roundelay" of brief affairs, LA RONDE is a carnal carousel ride--visually and thematically--"turned" (narrated) by puppetmaster Anton Walbrook. In 19th-century Vienna, a young prostitute (the glorious Simone Signoret) momentarily loves a soldier (Serge Reggiani), who then takes up with a little maid (kittenish Simone Simon, post-Cat People). The merry-go-round continues to whirl, with one partner from the pairings always continuing into the next liaison, until the movement ends where it began. If Schnitzler meant to cast a mordant gaze on sexual shallowness, Ophuls recognizes both the power and evanescence of desire. The cast could not be improved upon: Danièlle Darrieux, Daniel Gélin, Odette Joyeux, Jean-Louis Barrault, Isa Miranda and Gérard Philipe.

FROM MAYERLING TO SARAJEVO / 
DE MAYERLING A SARAJEVO
(France,1940; 89 minutes)
"One of the finest and most misunderstood of all Ophuls' films," according to Robin Wood, SARAJEVO was the last film the director completed in France before fleeing the Nazis to America (and Hollywood). A sumptuous historical drama shot with the extravagant style of his later work, the film is set in the corrupt Austro-Hungarian court, and chronicles the love affair of Countess Sophie and Archduke Ferdinand as they are swept up in the events that led to the First World War. Ophuls luxuriates in the suffocating elegance of court life and characteristically is more interested in the plight of the countess than in the impending doom of the heir apparent. "Finds him relishing the sort of thing he did best--casting an ironic eye on the aristocracy and portraying a bitter-sweet romance against a background of operas, balls, and rides through the woods" (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide).
