A soft and elegant film that subtly captures the feelings involved in a marriage that is slowly dying before its partners' eyes.What I found most remarkable about "The Earrings of Madame de..." was the fact that it made me actually care about the people in it. These are rich, privileged aristocrats who live in a rarefied, pampered world. They might as well live on a different planet as far as the majority of nearly everyone else is concerned. Who cares if their marriage isn't a good one, or that they're bored, or discontent? Let their money and servants console them.But that isn't how I felt watching the film. I think Max Ophuls even wants his audience to feel that way at first so that he can upend their expectations. After all, he doesn't even give his heroine a name -- she's simply a stand in for hundreds of other women feeling the same things and contending with the same emotions. But by the end of this film, my heart went out to this individual woman, and I was nearly breathless with the anticipation of seeing how her story would end.The film looks sumptuous, with lush black and white art direction and Oscar-nominated costumes.Grade: A

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.

"The Earrings Of Madame de..." is an homage to the rich in fin de siecle France, with the accompanying elegance and opulence front and center. The lush set pieces could have received an Oscar nom on their own, as could Ophuls' celebrated camera work. It is a clever and absorbing love story, the overall effect of which is of a world trivialized and complicated by excessive wealth and by a very common ethical sense.Madame is 'idle rich', and has run up some undisclosed debts and sells her earrings, a wedding gift from her husband and which she deems unattractive and therefore disposable. She pretends they are stolen but the jeweler brings them back to her husband, who buys them back and gives them to his mistress. They eventually end up in Constantinople, purchased by a Count who, enchanted at first sight by Madame, gives them to her as a gift. From here on matters take some predictable turns. The story is quite good and avoids tedium by virtue of the competence of the actors and by Ophuls' camera. I enjoyed the lush sets and the overall deliberate pace, which was made quicker by his camera movement. It is the kind of picture which lingers in the mind long after it is over. It is not available in any format and was shown at MOMA, NYC in 35mm.

Okay. Time for me to make a bit of a speech. I love French films and have noticed something about Max Ophüls' films (yes, I know he was German but made films in France). Practically all of his famous films have to do with adultery or prostitution. Now I guess I am a pretty old fashioned guy, but I don't enjoy scripts about these topics. So, although I'll admit he was a master storyteller, I just had a hard time getting into the stories or caring about the characters. Who cares about the husband or wife in this film? They both were pretty despicable rich folks who seemed to have nothing to do with their time but gamble, shoot people and flirt with people other than their spouses. What idiots.The film is about a General and his wife the Comptese. They both have every reason to be happy and you think through the first part of the film that they are. But, you do know that the Comptese is unwise--she's run up gambling debts and cannot pay for them without telling her husband. They CAN afford to pay but she doesn't want him to know, so she sells her prize diamond earrings. Then, she claims they were lost. Later, the husband learns that she sold them and buys them back from the man who bought them. Then, he gives them to his mistress. In the meantime, she begins an affair with another man and he is able to buy the earrings and give them to her! There's a bit more to this and there is a sad ending, but I'll let you see this for yourself.I can't fault the film's acting. It stars Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica--all very fine actors. And, as I said above, the film looked lovely--really, really nice. I just didn't care about the characters and so I have a hard time really endorsing the film wholeheartedly. Worth seeing, but not a must-see.