The most expensive European film produced up to its time, Lola Montès underperformed at the box office, but it had an important artistic influence on the French New Wave cinema movement, and continues to have many distinguished critical admirers.

Each question costs 25 cents, which are not intended as a payment for Lola, as the ringmaster announces, since they will be donated by her to a correctional home for fallen women.

The couple spend the night in an inn, and, when he thinks Lola is asleep, Liszt writes a farewell note that includes a short musical piece.

At the beginning of the second act in the circus, the ringmaster claims that the marriage was happy, but a flashback shows that after five years Lola fled from her violent, constantly drunk and cheating husband.

Lola makes her debut as a dancer in Madrid, is kidnapped by a rich Russian, whose love she rejected, and is freed by the intervention of the French ambassador.

She relates how she danced in Tivoli and was in love with the conductor of the orchestra, and a short flashback shows how she found out on stage that he was married, so she interrupted the performance to slap him and expose him in front of his wife.

Back in the circus, while the list of Lola's increasingly-powerful lovers is read out, ranging from Richard Wagner to Frédéric Chopin, from Count von Lichtenfeld to the Grand Duke of Hesse, she swings higher and higher on a trapeze structure until she reaches a platform at the top of the circus tent, where a performer dressed as King Ludwig I of Bavaria awaits her.

The extended flashback of Lola's time in Bavaria begins with her offering a handsome student hiking in the snowy mountains a ride in her carriage if he will show her the way to Munich.

Instead of being punished, she is granted a private audience with Ludwig, during which she complains about the stodginess of the people who did not hire her and clears any doubts about her figure by tearing open her bodice.

During the March Revolution of 1848, the citizens rebel against her, and she flees across the border to Austria at night with the help of the student she met on the way to Munich.

German director Max Ophüls was initially critical of the material, but, after studying the biography of Lola Montez, he began to work on the script, planning to make a black-and-white film.

[3] Since Ophüls wanted the film to revolve around the idea of a circus in which Lola Montez answers questions about her life in front of an audience seated around the ring, the production and distribution departments decided to shoot in color.

The shooting locations included Paris, Nice, Schloss Weißenstein in Pommersfelden, Bamberg, and at Bavaria Studios in Munich.

Since, in return for agreeing to shoot in CinemaScope, Ophüls obtained the assurance that "all technical and artistic resources would be made available to him",[5] the cost of the film rose to unprecedented heights for the time.

Despite all of this, Reinegger, the distributor of Union-Film, was able to complete production of Lola Montès thanks to two circumstances: the film had been insured against exceeding the scheduled 82 day shoot due to force majeure,[8] and the Heimatfilm Der Förster vom Silberwald (1954) had recently found success at the box office.

It was screened in its full Cinemascope aspect ratio, and included five minutes of additional footage never before shown in any U.S. release of the film.