The typically splendid Criterion edition of Max Ophuls's 1953 "Earrings of Madame de..." (Just "Madame de..." in the French original) sustained my memory that it is a great movie. That does not mean I have to like it, only admire the skill with which everyone brought Ophuls's vision of the catastrophe of love to the screen.

Ophuls is famous — perhaps infamous — for extended takes with moving camera, particularly Madame de... (Danielle Darrieux) and Baron Fabrizio Donati (Vittorio De Sica) falling in love as they swirl through waltzes in various high society balls. There are many other "sequence shots", the major ones highlighted by Paul Thomas Anderson in an "Introduction," that I would strongly urge viewers to watch after the movie, even if, like me, they have seen the movie before. (He also prepared an extended, plot-spoiling "Introduction" to "Le plaisir," the movie based on three Maupassant stories that Ophuls made before "Mme. de..."; Criterion released DVDs of both at the same time this fall.)

The story is fairly simple: the "incorrigible flirt" Madame de... has run up debts despite the generosity of her husband, who is both a count and a general (Charles Boyer). She decides to take a pair of earrings to the jeweler to get the 20,000 francs she needs. The jeweler then takes the earrings to the general in his headquarters. He buys them back and goes along with his wife's charade of losing them.

The general gives the earrings as a going-away present to his mistress who is moving to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Losing at roulette, she sells them. They are bought by Baron  Donati, the Italian ambassador to France, who is struck by Madame's beauty in a train station. Then his carriage is struck by hers. Finally, they meet. The general warns the baron that his wife is an "incorrigible flirt."

The heretofore shallow, very materialistic, very spoiled wife falls in love with the baron (in the waltz sequence). The baron gives her the earrings. Now reminding her of her lover, she pretends to find the long-lost earrings. Her husband does not immediately show his dismay, but has a tête-à-tête with the baron in which the general tells the baron that they were a wedding present and inquires whether the baron met the woman in Constantinople who had owned them.

It is then that Madame de... makes a fatal mistake (the second one, if falling in love with someone is her first) and lies to the baron about who first gave her the earrings — not one lie, but another one when pressed. He concludes she is not trustworthy (I'd have to agree with this inference).

The general thinks she will get over her infatuation and, having ordered the baron to sell the earrings back to the general's jeweler and purchased them for a third time, forces her to give the earrings to a niece who has just produced a baby (keeping the jewels in the family).

The earrings will change owners three more times, though the general does not purchase them any more times. What began as trinkets with which to raise cash become symbols for Madame... and I think that the English-language title's shift of emphasis is warranted.

I am somewhat surprised that this tale of betrayal (of truth and of marriage vows) involving silver foxes (Boyer and De Sica were both in their 50s) and a frivolous society woman in her late 30s so impressed me when I was in my 20s. I realized that the aristocratic men had a lot more experience of the world and of amours than she.

Although lacking his experience, charm, and poise, I identified with the general. I aspired to be a sophisticate like him and thought Madame's ineptness at "playing the game" somewhere between puzzling and annoying. I still don't see how she could have fallen so hard for De Sica's baron, who is as suave and old and experienced as her husband.  It's not that I would deny passion to 50-year-olds, just that I'm surprised that I did when I was in my 20s.

I guess that most viewers are more sympathetic to Madame in her unconcern for the honor code by which the count/general and the baron/ambassador live. The count/general is less masochistic than I remember, the baron/ambassador more so.

Love brought pain in the great Ophuls movies (Letter from an Unknown Woman, La Ronde, Le Plaisir, Mme. de...--and Ophul's first color film and final film "Lola Montes," which lacks the charisma of Darrieux, who had starred in the previous three). Not that Ophuls could leave the subject alone.

One of the DVD bonus features is a tv interview (from decades ago) with Louise de Vilmorin, who wrote the book. She says that her book was not a love story and that she does not much like women. She also says that the movie gets everything in the book wrong, starting with moving the story from Vienna ca. 1938 to Paris some time in the 19th century (before gas lights).

To the perennial question (see my list of the best movies posing it) "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?" I think that Madame would have answered "yes." From my observation of her case, I would answer no. I already know that I am less a romantic than she, or even Ophuls. I think he'd answer "yes," too, though with a clear-eyed reckoning of what a catastrophe love often is for the one who loves. Including, in my viewing, the general at the end.

(The baron does not love as much as Madame, but for a time is in my estimation more than infatuated with her... and all three of the leads have huge amounts of personal vanity of one sort or another. Louise de Vilmorin says her short novel was about pride not love, and I don't think that this was as lost in translation to the screen as she thought. It seems to me that Ophuls was enamored by rather than satirizing the honor code that seems unimportant to Madame. Similarly, Ophuls seems to have been enamored with the era before he was born in 1902 with its rigid social hierarchy and codes of behavior. He made some movies set in the present during his American exile and could have made movies set in the present after his return to France, but chose material from the past and in this case transformed the era of the source material to a more distant past.)

In addition to remastering the print (and mono soundtrack of Oscar Straus tunes, orchestrated by Georges Van Parys), Criterion has added new and legible subtitles and a substantial array of bonus features, the longest and most informative of which is with then-assistant director Alain Jessua. Screenwriter Annette Wademant is almost as tart, though far more admiring, in her memories of the project than Louise de Vilmorin. There is also an interview of then-assistant production designer Marc Frederix, and a visual appreciation by Tag Gallagher (that is nearly as focused on tracking shots than Anderson's "Introduction").

I was too exhausted by all that to listen to the commentary track by Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar. The DVD booklet includes a very informative and appreciative essay by Molly Haskell and the text of the original novel(la).

Criterion does it right! I wish that the now nonagenarian Darrieux, who is still making movies (heard in "Persepolis," the matriarch in "8 Woman" and more), had been interviewed, but can't imagine that she was not asked. The DVD deserves 5 stars even if I don't actually like the movie itself all that much (while recognizing its amazing accomplishments in visual story-telling; I don't really like "Citizen Kane" either, often the choice of critics as the greatest movie ever made).

©  2008, Stephen O. Murray

This review is m sendoff to both Barbara's French (etc.) finds writeoff and my black-and-white movie Isinga memorial one. Bonne année to all!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD