Day for Night Magazine

Ellipsis

The Search for Mearning in the Earrings of Madame de...
By Adam Dorsky

The characters in The Earrings of Madame de… are all searching. The Comtesse Louise de… searches for a lover, General Andre de… searches for a comfortable home life, and Baron Fabrizio Donati searches for truth and meaning. Guiding them along their journey is director Max Ophuls, whose famous roaming camera follows the characters in a series of elaborately choreographed tracking shots. By traveling with these characters and observing their lives in long takes, Ophuls captures the pain and drama of manners and private regret. A shattering, tragic adaptation of Louise Leveque de Vilmorin’s 1951 novel, Ophuls’ celebrated film gets a polished re-release courtesy of the Criterion Collection.

The Earrings of Madame de… begins with the Comtesse Louise de…trying to decide which of her belongings she should sell to pay off her debt. Eventually, she settles on a valuable pair of earrings she received as wedding present from her husband, a telling indicator of the state of her marriage. After selling the earrings, the Comtesse engages in a series of diversions and lies to cover up the scandalous deed. Matters become further complicated when her lover, Fabrizio Donati, gives her the same pair of earrings as a gift. From this point on, Madame de…begins to lose track of her lies, eventually leading to tragedy.

Ophuls handles this complicated series of events with remarkable dexterity, expressing the characters’ search for resolution with his trademark tracking shots. Like the earrings at the center of the story, and the characters with which they come into contact, the camera roams aimlessly and gently, seeking out details only when characters do. In this sense, the film shares a kinship with Jean Renoir’s legendary 1939 masterpiece The Rules of the Game, which also critiques the vacuous nature of bourgeois French life. Like Renoir, Ophuls focuses on characters living privileged existences who, when pressed, probably could not name anything for which they are thankful. Meaning comes only from passing trifles and diversions—a stolen moment of passion between the Comtesse and Fabrizio in a coach, or the surprise reappearance of the earrings after weeks of absence.

This theme particularly comes through in one of the most famous sequences in the film: a long tracking shot of a dance between Madame de… and Fabrizio Donati. Effortlessly following the characters from room to room, we observe an uninterrupted, intimate conversation between the two lovers. Ironically, much of it involves the careful concealment of lies and the keeping up of appearances: what to do about the earrings, how to behave around the Madame’s husband, or when they can schedule private meetings. Immediately, we sense the diminishing joy of the two lovers who are continuously dancing around the truth for the sake of posterity. While I will not reveal the ending, this dance holds a key to the final undoing of Ophuls’ characters, the resigned conclusion to a well-coordinated dance.

The Criterion Collection presents The Earrings of Madame de… in a stunning new transfer. Despite the soft, mono-tonal style of Ophuls’ cinematography that was characteristic of the era, blacks are impeccably deep and details remain rich throughout. Only a few markings on the print are noticeable. Director Paul Thomas Anderson presents an introductory commentary on various scenes of the film; part reminiscence, part analysis, the audio track illuminates portions of the film that the viewer may not notice and acts as a nice companion piece to watch after the first viewing. Additionally, the package comes with a large booklet complete with essays on the film and the original story on which it was based.

Like the title of the film, the characters in The Earrings of Madame de… stand on the edge of an ellipsis, searching for completion. Though Ophuls’ trademark roaming camera, we follow these characters in an uninterrupted and nearly unfiltered journey, giving us a unique and intimate perspective on a private tragedy. Because Ophuls’ strategically conceals the last name of his title character, he allows this tragedy to become our own. Indeed, everyone knows a Madame de, all we have to do is fill in the surname….