SOURCE: "Lisa, Lola, and L: The Woman Unknown as the Woman Immortal in Ophuls and Robbe-Grillet," in Michigan Academician, Vol. XII, No. 3, Winter, 1980, pp. 251-9.

In the following essay, Burdick identifies similar themes in Ophuls's Letter from an Unknown Woman and Lola Montes, and Alain Robbe-Grillet's L'Immortelle.

One intuition of the medieval romancers still animates modern art: Tristan and Iseult, the archetypal lovers, cannot possess each other forever without a potion or a death. Quite simply, human love does not last as long as it should. Alain Robbe-Grillet's glacial geometries and Max Ophuls' swirling spirals create two cinematic styles—one might say two filmic languages—for carrying the same terrible message. Their films often show a male on a quest; typically this is a search for a woman. But the male is also terrified of finding what he seeks; if he finds her, he must find ways to...