The Earrings of Madame de...

Director: Max Ophuls

1953 / 105min / 35mm

Noblewoman Danielle Darrieux, desperate for cash, sells a pair of diamond earrings gifted by aristocrat spouse Charles Boyer, only to have them borne back to her by Vittorio de Sica’s handsome Italian baron, a gift initiating a potentially destructive love affair. An exquisite evocation of Paris in the Belle Époque, in which Ophuls’s camera moves through ballrooms and bedchambers with the weightless grace of a prima ballerina. “A difficult work, in the fullest sense of the word, even in its writing, one in which everything aims to disconcert, distract the viewer from what is essential through the accumulation of secondary actions, wrong turns, repetitions and delays; a work in which the picturesque tries hard to conceal the pathetic.” —Jacques Rivette

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Max Ophuls: Motion Within Motion