The opening shot of “The Earrings of Madame de…” is of the earrings and not the eponymous character. In fact the first glimpse we get of the nameless Countess played by Danielle Darrieux is her reflection in her mirror. Like all the clothes and luxurious jewelry she lingers over, she is an object. She has no name, and yet the two men in her life have a desperate attachment to her. She is one of their belongings, and Max Ophuls film is about the identity and choices we are allowed when we become so attached to others, and how those same people have the power to mold and manipulate us to make us their own.
“The Earrings of Madame de…” is a curiously simple film about identity and our choices. Today a film considering these themes would be an elaborate sci-fi, but this one works just as well with a love-triangle plot. A woman sells a pair of earrings given to her as a wedding present by her husband, and the earrings eventually end up in the hands of a baron trying to court her. This results in a tapestry of lies that carefully and stylishly unravels.
This concept is actually quite comical at times, and the best illustration of how silly the selling, buying and exchanging of the earrings is, coupled with the lies constantly piling on top of each other, is shown in just one of the film’s elaborate sets. Ophuls had a pawn shop constructed for the film that has a spiral staircase rising up to an office, and in one shot the film glides up the 4th wall to the second floor in one elegant shot, doing wonders for the film’s sense of beauty and symbolic imagery.
The whole film is constructed with that sort of care, spectacle and subtlety, so much so that it is considered in some circles to be one of the greatest films ever made. I didn’t grasp as much of the complexity in the film’s bourgeois sex life, but one must appreciate the film’s beauty, delicate story telling and dialogue.
One scene embodies all three. The Countess and her lover played by Italian neo-realistic director Vittorio De Sica waltz endlessly, with fades hidden behind other dancers and objects seamlessly revealing how much time has passed between evenings, the characters changing and falling more in love between each of them.
Amidst it, lines like “It’s when we have the most to say that we can’t speak at all,” “Coincidence is only extraordinary because it is so natural” and “Unhappiness is our own invention” make the film so wonderfully memorable.
Ophuls, a German director working in France as well as other countries, is new to me, but he’s known for a number of other equally lavish films, most filmed before this one in 1953.