France
1953
100 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
French
445
French master Max Ophuls’s most cherished work, The Earrings of Madame de . . . is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman known only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets off a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin’s incisive fin de siècle novel with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it’s been called the equal to that of Orson Welles.
| Comtesse Louise de | Danielle Darrieux |
| Générale André de | Charles Boyer |
| Baron Fabrizio Donati | Vittorio De Sica |
| Monsieur Rémy | Jean Debucourt |
| Monsieur de Bernac | Jean Galland |
| Lola | Lia Di Leo |
| Director | Max Ophuls |
| Based on the novel by | Louise de Vilmorin |
| Adaptation by | Marcel Achard, Max Ophuls and Annette Wademant |
| Cinematography | Christian Matras |
| Music | Oscar Straus and Georges van Parys |
| Costumes | Georges Annenkov and Rosine Delamare |
| Sound | Antoine Petitjean |
| Editing | Borys Lewin |
The summer 2009 issue of Film Quarterly (now in its fiftieth year!) is out, and in it renowned professor and film theorist Laura Mulvey presents a close reading of Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de . . . , looking at the film in terms of repetition—both thematic and with regard . . .
Though we fully expected our special edition of Max Ophuls’s long-unavailable The Earrings of Madame de . . . to garner a lot of attention from movie lovers everywhere (this is, after all, the film that elder statesman Andrew . . .
For those of us who rank The Earrings of Madame de . . . at the top of our list of all-time favorite films, the mystery is why our passion isn’t universally shared. Every year, thanks to committed . . .
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