The Earrings of Madame de... (1954)

Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Call me a pessimist, but the ending of Madame De doesn't spell too much in the way of happiness for any of the characters, even if what one might think as the worst possible scenario didn't happen. Max Ophuls, with his brilliant film The Earrings of Madame De, doesn't allow the usual catharsis that one might expect from a romantic drama of this sort, where infidelity is merely implied and the veneer of early 20th century bourgeois is a cover for a feelings that rarely get in view. Instead, as with the rest of the film, we're given something of a wonderful contradiction, where something is compelling and graceful, but in a sort of dark way too. The doomed love of the film is one where the simple act of admitting love is a tough thing to do, and at the same time this doom is contrasted by a very swift, effortlessly moving camera, which goes around its characters trying to get us completely immersed in this world while feeling at the same time something isn't quite right. Why shouldn't Louise get what she really would want? Well, then the movie would be over pretty quickly.

The journey of a pair of year rings from it's owner Madame De. It was a wedding gift from her husband General Andre. The ear ring was secretly sold by Madame to pay off her debts. It was sold to the same merchant from whom her husband bought it. The merchant informs the General and he buys the ear rings again, but, gives it to his lover. The lover looses it in a gambling at Istanbul. Then it makes a comeback to the Madame. The journey of this "McGuffin" is surrounded by story that includes love and betrayal.A wonderful movie that you will love for it's great making. The actors are wonderful, especially the protagonist Danielle Darrieux. Do not miss this. A must watch. highly recommended.#KiduMovie

The two top gallant gentlemen of the cinema as rivals of its most beautiful woman, both loving her beyond expression in the subtlest possible intrigue of fate as unpredictable as an improvised thriller in which the writer himself has no idea of where the mechanics of destiny will lead him or the puppets of his tale, a labyrinth of love leading everywhere but out of it, filmed with all the refined expertise of perhaps the greatest film director of all, using his constantly moving camera for an overwhelming constant flood of beauty and poetry. This is simply incredible. You can see every film of his again and again forever, since their richness of details and amounting complications of human feelings always expressed by hints and understatements are unfathomably without end. Danielle Darrieux. great already in the 30s and chosen by most cinema lovers as the one outstanding film queen of beauty, is 99 today (1st of May 2016), while her warm beauty dominates her every film forever. Charles Boyer is always reliably excellent and here nobler than ever as the husband, while Vittorio de Sica perhaps makes his most sincere performance as the passionate lover, just as honestly romantic as Charles Boyer's absolute nobility couldn't be more convincing. What about the story, then, actually seemingly superficially a trifle of unavoidable complications resulting from white lies, but the miracle is how this mere miniature of an episodic detail is aggrandized into a love drama of more than epic proportions involving all kinds of storms of a thrilling melodrama. Comedy or tragedy? No, just a human documentary charting an ocean of the complications of being just human. To this comes Oscar Straus' delightful music adorning the masterpiece with a golden frame of tenderness, as if the composer adored the poor victims of this train of complications resulting from the mere trifle of a white lie. Is anyone committing any mistake at all to deserve all this agony of unnecessary self-torture resulting from mere complexes of feelings? No, in all this towering guilt no one is to blame for anything. They are all as innocent as children getting mixed up in a game that goes beyond them. Maybe the tragedy could have been avoided, but then the French are as they are with a penchant for an irrevocably undeniable mentality of Crime Passionnel. There Max Ophuls finds a dead end of his story and film, which perhaps was necessary, or else a story like this could never have ended. In fact, there was a continuation, but Ophuls cut it out, forcing himself to avoid overdoing it. The masterpiece just couldn't be driven further.Still, it's not his best film. But it's a perfect example of the virtuosity of his art.

Gliding...The inexorable movement - of life.Why talk about "camera movements" - tracks, dollies, cranes - at all, if we're not going to talk about what they DO - what they MEAN.Anybody with enough money can fill their film with dolly shots.The Dance...Of lifeOf deathTrains. Balls and trains.The circularity of a "white lie"The elegance of an elegant ensemble each bringing their own life story to bear on the way they inhabit (and do they!) their roles. You don't need to know anything about this, but the more you know the deeper the film gets.Maybe the key line is when Boyer says to Darrieux "Our relationship is only superficially superficial".Those who need to "identify" with the characters in a film, and thus find that the social position of these characters makes engagement with this film impossible...Well, I just feel sorry for you. Really.I think another read through of a concise cinema book - maybe Sarris' American Cinema - is in order.What does he write about Ophuls? "His elegant characters lack nothing and lose everything."Exactly.But besides all that...Composition and the clarity of the arc. Underneath all of the gliding and circularity, an unstoppable forward motion. Carried through and fulfilled like in very,very few films. The word "Masterpiece" - unfortunate word! - must be used.One word to my fellow IMDb reviewers: I really think the word "boring" should carry the same onus as an unacknowledged spoiler. You are bored? Check yourself.This review has nearly no content, but it is very hard to write anything about perfection.