Sameir Ali 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

clanciai 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.

Sergeant_Tibbs The Earrings of Madame De is probably the most integral classic that I hadn't seen, not necessarily for its importance in cinema history but in its influence with my contemporary favourites. It's clear to see its fingerprints all over the work of Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson for instance and its technical bravura is the easiest aspect to find immediately enthralling. Letter From An Unknown Woman had hints of Ophuls' style, but Madame De is full throttle with his marvellous controlled hand with its swirling camera-work complimenting the extravagant production and costume design. There's a wonderful romance in how it handles fate and coincidence in its satisfying full-circle structure, but there's a tender bittersweetness in how it shows finding love through another love. The eventual tragedy is counter-balanced by good humour despite the admittedly unlikeable characters. But that just feeds into the superficiality of the film's construction and how it doesn't matter how beautiful something is, as demonstrated by what the earrings mean to Madame De by the end. This is excellent filmmaking and I must watch more Ophuls immediately.9/10

tieman64 Max Ophuls directs "Madame de...", an adaptation of a Louise Leveque de Vilmorin period novel of the same name. The plot? In early 20th century Paris, the wife of an adulterous husband sells a pair of prized earrings in order to pay her mounting debts. This sets off a chain reaction involving much melodrama, scandal and legal reprisals.Fittingly, our heroine's full name is never disclosed, epitomising her fading self-worth. She likewise ascribes little value to the discarded earrings, a gift from her husband which now serves only to remind of a painful marriage. Rescuing our heroine from torment - and the social strictures of the day - is Fabrizio Donati, a nobleman played by director Vittorio De Sica.Once regarded as a masterpiece, Max Ophuls' "Madame de..." has since fallen out of fashion. Ophuls, at one point the darling of esteemed film-directors (Renoir, Resnais, Kubrick etc), is himself now oft ignored. With voluptuous black-and-white cinematography by Christian Matras.7.5/10 – See "The Shop Around The Corner".