'Letter From an Unknown Woman'

Notable only because it was directed by Max Ophüls, a German Jew who fled his homeland in 1933 as the Nazis started rattling the cage. He fled again, this time from France, in 1938 and finally landing in the United States. Letter from an Unknown Woman was the second of Ophüls’ Hollywood productions, one of four he completed in the United States before going back to France to finish his life.

Before Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls’ was fired from the film Vendetta by Howard Hughes for either being a foreigner in Hollywood or his slow shooting pace. Or both. This firing came after four years of waiting to get a shot in the United States.

After returning to France in 1950, he never did another Hollywood film. And after leaving, he never filmed in Germany.