The rampant female masochism of “Letter from an Unknown Woman” has always mitigated against my full pleasure of Max Ophuls’ artistry, and the extraordinary photography of Franz Planer.

For the uninitiated: the story tracks a young girl (Joan Fontaine) who falls in love with a Byronic pianist (Louis Jourdan) at the age of 12, spends the night with him at the age of 21 or so, raises his child and marries, then throws it all away to go off with him again eight years later. At no time does the pianist, who has become a weathered roue, recognize her.

Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan in a romantic love story.

It was always clear that Ophuls bathed the film in the luxurious – and necessary – Viennese atmosphere of coffee-houses and parks at the turn of the last century, all of it summoned on the Universal back lot.

But what struck me this time was the film’s final quarter, when she gives up a life of leisure and comfort to go off with a worthless man for whom she has always been and always will be a nonentity. His promise has been destroyed by self-gratification, his talent corroded by self-loathing. He freely admits it, and it doesn’t matter. She has to have him, and by having him, seals her fate.

It all reminded me of Nicole Kidman’s marijuana-fueled monologue in “Eyes Wide Shut,” where she tells her appalled husband of being overwhelmed by lust for a perfect stranger, and how she would have abandoned her husband and child in a heartbeat, if the stranger had only asked her.

Kubrick, of course, was a great admirer of Max Ophuls, with a similar technique, although a completely different tone and temperment. I can’t help wondering if the plot point in the earlier film became a reverie in the later one.

Either way, the Ophuls film has far more resonance for me now than it ever did before, which probably means I’ve observed enough people destroying themselves to learn that it’s the way of the world, masochistic or not.