The Earrings of Madame de… by Max Ophuls is a film like David Lean’s Brief Encounter that comes as close as a film can to a sort of geometrical perfection. Without getting too carried away with abstract terminology The Earrings of Madame de… has such a flawlessly symmetrical feel in that all of the component parts, the ingredients, that go into making a great film, or any film all, fit together so perfectly that it’s like a recipe that looks painfully simple but is impossible to replicate.
This is the third Max Ophuls film I’ve seen after La Ronde and Lola Montes and I think he’s an outstanding filmmaker. He has such an identifiable, signature style with the long, elaborate shots and this strange tone he’s able to sustain in these three films that exists in some nebulous region between tragedy and comedy, sometimes getting close to farce, without really committing to one or the other. The Earrings of Madame de… is about a woman who sells a pair of earrings given to her as a wedding gift by her husband and this act sets of a chain of events that defy all reason. The earrings keep managing to find their way back to her, her husband and her lover as they are passed, purchased and traded around and is the link connecting these three people. It is this business with the earrings that borders on becoming farce but it’s all handled so matter-of-factly that it never seems like an unwanted distraction or digression from the love triangle aspect, which is the heart of the movie and becomes the ultimate tragedy for all three characters.
The Earrings of Madame de… is a simple, and some may say conventional, romantic tragedy but that simplicity can be deceiving. It is not a simplicity that comes from negligence or of anything lacking or timidity on the part of the filmmaker. It is a kind of simplicity that cannot be duplicated because it comes from such a complete mastery of craft. It comes from a very deep place within the heart of the artist. It’s a paring down to a level where any sort of stylistic cosmetics or pyrotechnics are no longer required as a means to boldly express feeling or ideas. The artist is able to condense 1000 different things into a means of expression that is almost imperceptible. You may think superficially that you’ve seen this kind of film before but you haven’t. The only modern comparisons I can think of are maybe some of Clint Eastwood’s films or Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha and Ran.
The Earrings of Madame de… is one of the all-time great films. It is the kind of film that you watch in amazement and when it’s over you say, “THAT is a movie!” Movies like this are why I love movies!