Andrew Sarris, the longtime critic for the Village Voice, has called Lola Montès “the greatest movie of all time.” While some may disagree with that accolade, it’s impossible to ignore a film that bears that kind of reputation and critical imprimatur.

And yet… Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès was in need of a rescue operation almost from the moment it opened. The massively expensive 1955 film, the director’s final film and his first ever in color, was greeted with such extreme critical rejection on its original opening in France, that it was withdrawn and re-cut by its studio (even the original negative was re-edited) and the whole narrative structure and content of the movie was altered — indeed, it opened in the United States as “The Sins Of Lola Montes” missing 30 minutes of its original 115 minute running time.

There was a serious effort at reconstructing the movie in the late 1960s, sponsored by producer Pierre Braunberger, which restored the film’s original cyclical narrative and some of the luster of the Technicolor cinematography; and the movie got a fresh re-release in the 1980s in the United States, though even those efforts only hinted at what audiences should have been seeing, in terms of depth of color and hue, and the sheer elegance of the narrative and the compositions.

In 2006, however, a fresh restoration was undertaken, this time sponsored by Braunberger’s daughter, and this time it was possible to restore the movie to its original ultra-wide 2.55-to-1 aspect ratio, and to recapture the Technicolor luster of the original and the scope and range of the original soundtrack. In the process, Lola Montès has become the first movie to be presented at the New York Film Festival on three separate occasions, at the first festival in 1963, again in 1969 on the occasion of the interim restoration, and in October of 2008 for the newest restoration. It opened at New York’s Film Forum on October 10 for a three-week run ending on the 30th. It is also scheduled to play the Laemmle’s Royal in Los Angeles from October 10-23, and the Laemmle’s Playhouse in Pasadena; the Music Box in Chicago from November 7-13; the Castro in San Francisco from November 19-25; the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley, California from November 19-25; the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California from November 19-25; and the Landmark’s E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. from November 21-27.