The final film by director Max Ophüls presents the real-life story of the scandalous nineteenth-century courtesan Lola Montes as it might have been presented by circus showman P.T. Barnum.  In breathtaking cinemascope and eye-popping colour, spectacle competes with moments of tenderness and loss as Montes’s life is replayed like an acrobatic fashion show version of Remembrance of Things Past. Peter Ustinov gives a deadpan performance as the circus master whose zeal for profits may conceal a deeper passion, as he summons up flashbacks of Montes’s affairs with Franz Liszt and the King of Bavaria.

With an introduction by Cathy Haynes and Tony Paley.