The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)

Oh yes, the Paul Thomas Anderson introduction is well worth the price of the disc alone. Like many firsts in my life, this was my very first (and after this film, nae my last) introduction to the cinematic triumph of director Max Ophuls. As I continue my journey into unknown, sometimes great sometimes poor, cinema it is hurdles like this that make this project so much easier. A creative story involving an unknown "Madame", a set of earrings that travelled the world, and a sick love ending in violence. If this was not what you were expecting to read when you saw this film post, do not be surprised. I was ill prepared as well. Thinking this was about to be another entry into the world of dry, French cinema, I was amazed by the beauty of each scene, the types of characters that were presented, and the overall message of the story. It is about coincidences, about life-fates, and ultimately about finding love too late in life. The Earrings of Madame de... is also incredibly evil in its relationship between our trio of "star-crossed" lovers. The General knows what is happening, he is not dumb, yet allows his wife to at times walk all over him. His wife, the ill-fated "Madame" (whose name we never know in an ominous way), who faints at any sign of trouble or doesn't get her way. Her character is the most peculiar because in one scene she is wiping her debts, in another she is cleansing the soul. I believe the General had a structure to his women. Then finally, it was good to see infamous director Vittorio de Sica sink his teeth into a role that required him to be more suave then he could possibly be in real life. That man was good, and no General was going to stand in his way. He had a pair of balls on him that modern society would be proud of. Who else walks into his mistresses house and doesn't get nervous about meeting her husband. Impressive. Finally, I was happy with the ending. It was a bold statement and brought us full circle with those pesky pieces of jewelry that brought us into the whole mess. My ultimate question with this film was if life goes like this, when will I ever see this M.U.S.C.L.E. figure I sold when I was a kid. It is surely taking quite a while to get back to me. This was a fantastic film with amazing characters. Beautiful transfer from Criterion. Not the film I thought it was going to be...

From the book Videohound's World Cinema: The Adventurer's Guide to Movie Watching written by Elliot Wilhelm:

"Narcissistic and spoiled, Madame de... (Danielle Darrieux) lives in ostentatious comfort with her military husband (Charles Boyer); she's so accepting of their unemotional marital arrangement - and their separate bedrooms - that she's unashamed to pawn for a little extra cash the earrings her husband gave her. But when the same earrings find their way back to her by way of her new lover, the dashing Baron Donati (Vittorio De Sica), her desire now to keep them as precious symbols of his love drives this dizzyingly romantic, heartbreaking masterpiece to its inevitable, tragic conclusion. The physical perfection and ingeniously symmetrical structure Max Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de...is easy to see; its surface glitters with the opulent palaces and opera houses of long-ago Paris, and the ceaseless, fluid camera movement plunges the viewer headlong into her vertiginous romantic plunge. Yet that surface is only an elegant means of transportation into the romantic world that Ophuls ruled; his famous tracking shots and swirling images were like the mirrors in a Cocteau film, on the other side of which existed a world of dreams vastly more real and effecting than our own. The power of Madame de... is achieved by Ophuls' alchemy - a confluence of form and truth that is, to say the least, vastly more wrenching than the sum of its parts. There are a dozen or so films - not exactly twelve, perhaps, but hardly a huge number by any measure - that I consistently believe to be THE best movie I've ever seen, every time I see it. That Madame de...is among that number each time I see it remains rapturous proof to me that despite frequent suspicions to the contrary, my lifetime in the dark has not been entirely misspent."

Visit our boys HERE if you want to own a copy of the film.

Mark: Blue Stars with Green highlight. I will watch this film again.