Set against fin de siecle Vienna of the 1900s, Max Ophuls' screen adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novella is the very definition of melodrama in all its regretful, melancholic tragedy. The night before he is due to fight a duel, a philandering concert pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jordan) receives a letter which begins with the heart grabbing lines "By the time you read this, I may be dead." The writer is Lisa (Joan Fontaine) with whom Stefan had a one night tryst ten years earlier resulting, unbeknownst to Stefan, in her pregnancy.

In a series of flashbacks Letter from an Unknown Woman tells the story of Lisa's unrequited love whilst revealing Stefan's emotional self-absorption to the exclusion of all but his own ego. Director Ophüls elegantly wraps the tragic love story in a distinctive, beautiful visual style making this the height of the melodrama genre (along with such other classics as Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows and Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful). Sit back and let it steal your heart.

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