The Earrings of Madame de… is a
relationship movie for people who don’t like relationship movies, a fashion
movie for people who don’t like fashion movies. Why? Because
it’s so good that it doesn’t matter what kind of movies you like: The Earrings of Madame de… will
captivate you.
The
premise is a twist on Daniel Deronda. A young woman pawns some jewelry after losing big at the
roulette wheel. Complications
ensue. Where Daniel Deronda
goes on to use the jewelry as a catalyst for growth and redemption, The Earrings of Madame de… uses it to
drive a tragedy. And oh, what a
tragedy.
Master
director Max Ophüls (born, coincidentally enough, in my ancestral home of Saarbrücken)
sets his tragedy in the Geneva of the late 1800s. His characters, mostly aristocrats, adhere to the social
mores of then-contemporary France, in which one married for business and one
loved whom one chose, so long as the love remained discreet.
This may seem off-putting.
After all, who wants to spend two hours ogling the lifestyles of the
aristocrats of yesteryear? It
works, however, because it allows Ophüls to do two things: create a world of
lavish sets, beautiful costumes, and extraordinary jewelry, and show how the
rules of that world can bind and constrict and kill.
It
also works because we care about the members of the film’s love triangle. Danielle Darrieux (now 96 years old and
credited in the remarkable Persepolis),
Charles Boyer, and Vittorio De Sica (director of the hilarious Divorce,
Italian Style), bring humanity to their roles as Madame de…, General
de…, and the Great Love of Madame de…’s life, respectively. We see through their wealth and their
pretensions to the real, needy people beneath their exteriors, and we feel for
them. Director Ophüls and
cinematographer Christian Matras brings them to life through a high-gloss,
high-beauty black and white photography that would count as realism if the
world were just a bit more poetic.
The Earrings of Madame de… is beautiful
to look at and heartbreaking to watch, and entirely successful in every
way. I loved it.
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