Tuesday | March 20, 2001 7:00 pm

The Earrings of Madame De...
(Madame De...)

Screening on Film

Directed by Max Ophüls.
With Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux, Vittorio De Sica.
France/Italy, 1953, 35mm, black & white, 105 min.
French with English subtitles.

With his characteristic use of long tracking shots that transcend space and his ability to coax sensitive perfor-mances from even nonactors, Max Ophüls displayed a peerless directorial talent. Renowned film critic Andrew Sarris has described Ophüls’s The Earrings of Madame de . . . as "the most perfect film ever made." The story follows the movement of a pair of diamond earrings that a debt-laden society woman (Darrieux) pawns back to the jeweler who made them. Originally commissioned by her husband (Boyer) and given to her the day after her wedding, the earrings pass through a series of hands only to wind up back in the woman’s possession.