Film

La Ronde

Name: La Ronde
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Drama
Released: 1950
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon, Daniel Gélin

Max Ophüls turns a chain of seductions into a spinning carousel, an unseen master of ceremonies (Anton Walbrook) stepping between rooms to introduce the next liaison as one lover's tryst becomes another's betrayal. It's Vienna 1900 rendered as elegant artifice: swirling camera moves, arch narration, a cast including Simone Signoret gliding through desire's endless relay. Light, knowing, quietly melancholy — for anyone who likes romance served with irony.

TMDb rating

7.3

If you liked this

The Earrings of Madame de...1953

Ophüls again, but tighter — a necklace instead of a soldier sets off a chain of desire and consequence, filmed with the same swooning, unbroken camera movements that made La Ronde so seductive to watch.

But If you just watched La Ronde, another elegant heartbreak from the same director might feel like dessert twice in a row.

Le Plaisir1952no page yet

Three Maupassant stories stitched together by the same wry, all-seeing narrator, moving from a masked ball to a brothel to a dying man's last request — Ophüls doing anthology instead of relay.

But Less streamlined than the others, and the middle segment's shift in tone throws some viewers off balance.

Closer2004

Four Londoners trade partners with the same cruel inevitability as La Ronde's Viennese lovers, but stripped of charm — Patrick Marber's dialogue is razor-sharp and the daisy-chain logic feels genuinely dangerous.

But Colder and nastier than La Ronde's rueful comedy; there's little tenderness left to cushion the cruelty.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

It Follows2015

Both films run on exactly the same engine: something passed from one person to the next in an unbroken relay, each link unaware of where it started. It Follows just makes that relay literal and lethal.

A supernatural curse passes from person to person through sex, each new victim becoming the next link in the chain — La Ronde's structure turned into a lean, terrifying teenage nightmare.

But It's a horror film with jump scares and dread, a long way from La Ronde's drawing-room wit and irony.

Magnolia1999

Paul Thomas Anderson widens the roundelay into a whole Los Angeles day, tracing how strangers' lives loop and collide with the sense that everyone is quietly implicated in everyone else's story.

But Three hours long, prone to melodrama, and ends on a famously strange note that doesn't land for everyone.

Short Cuts1993

Altman spreads Raymond Carver's stories across Los Angeles, following the same baton-pass structure — one couple's argument bleeding into a stranger's afternoon — with a shaggier, funnier American sprawl.

But Nearly three hours long with a cast so large the connections can feel diffuse rather than pointed.

Love Actually2003

The comfort-food cousin — a London Christmas where everyone's romance quietly touches someone else's, same relay idea minus the irony, played for warmth instead of rue.

But Sentimental where La Ronde is knowing, and a couple of its subplots have aged rather badly since.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona2008no page yet

Woody Allen runs his own roundelay through two women, one painter, and his ex-wife, filmed with the same amused, slightly rueful distance from its characters' bad decisions.

But Allen's presence behind the camera is now something a lot of viewers can't easily set aside.

Amores Perros2000

Three stories collide around a single car crash in Mexico City, desire and violence rippling outward the way La Ronde's affairs ripple through a drawing room — just far rougher.

But Considerably more brutal and kinetic than La Ronde's light touch; not for the faint of heart.

Traffic2000

Soderbergh applies the same chain-of-consequence structure to the drug trade instead of the bedroom, each character's choice implicating the next person down the line.

But Genre and tone are miles from La Ronde's romantic irony — this is grim, procedural, and unsentimental.

Eyes Wide Shut1999

Same author, same nerve: Schnitzler spent his career picking apart the gap between what people say about marriage and what they actually do. Kubrick takes that scalpel and slows the waltz into a fever dream.

Kubrick's final film adapts a different novella by Arthur Schnitzler — the same writer whose play gave us La Ronde — turning his obsessions with marriage, desire and hypocrisy into a cold, dreamlike odyssey through one New York night.

But Glacially slow and deliberately alienating; its infamous masked orgy sequence has overshadowed the quieter, sadder film around it.

Dekalog1989no page yet

Same structural trick — a chain of lives quietly handing off to one another — but Kieślowski swaps La Ronde's romantic irony for moral seriousness, and its ballroom lightness for grey Warsaw stairwells.

Kieślowski's ten hour-long films follow residents of a single Warsaw apartment block, each one's moral crisis quietly touching the next tenant's story — La Ronde's baton-pass structure remade as spiritual reckoning rather than seduction.

But Ten hours of Polish television, largely joyless and demanding — about as far from La Ronde's light comic touch as you can get.