Anton Walbrook and Max Ophüls

The moment I fell for Anton Walbrook was exactly the point, when he realises as König Ludwig that he has lost his artistic paradise. The look of infinite sadness and longing in Ludwig's/Anton's eyes, which was also the look of so many people he had known, Ophüls, Dr Karl Wollf, to name just two, who fortunately had survived Nazi persecution, simply took my breath away. From that moment on I had to know who this man was.
Especially French reviewers have criticised that Ophüls showed the Bavarian king far too favourable, something they did not see was, to my mind at least, that far from telling Lola's history, he told a more recent story, that of Germany inbetween the World Wars, of the artistic freedom and liberties he enjoyed, and sadly of his and others' eventual eviction from this paradise. In its consequences quite chilling. There is also Hilde Ophüls account of Max first visit to Germany after WW2, when he cried inconsolably behind the wheel of his car when some person had remarked that he must be revisiting his native country (Heimat).