The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) on Netflix
Comtesse Louise de... is in debt. She secretly sells the diamond earrings her husband, Général André de..., gave her as a wedding present, and claims she lost them at the opera.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.8/1012,296 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Featurette
Plot summary
Comtesse Louise de... and her husband, Général André de..., live companionably in Belle Époque Paris, in separate rooms and with no children, and André keeps a mistress named Lola. Louise's lifestyle has buried her in debts, so she takes the diamond earrings André gave her when they married back to the jeweler, Rémy, and invents a story about losing them at the opera. The search reaches the newspapers, and Rémy discreetly offers the earrings back to André. Rather than accuse his wife, André buys them and passes them to Lola as a parting gift when she leaves for Constantinople. Lola loses at roulette there and sells them, and an Italian diplomat, Baron Fabrizio Donati, buys them from a jeweler and carries them to Paris.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For his original treatment of The Earrings of Madame de..., director Max Ophüls planned to shoot every scene through mirrors on walls and elsewhere, but his producers rejected the idea.
- Ophüls said the finished screenplay of The Earrings of Madame de... had moved far from Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin's short novel, keeping little besides the earrings and the senselessness of the woman's life.
- After the experience of shooting La Ronde in 1950, Max Ophüls prepared heavily for The Earrings of Madame de... and completed production ahead of schedule and under budget.
- Ophüls was at first too embarrassed to give direction to Vittorio De Sica in The Earrings of Madame de..., out of respect for De Sica's own work as a director, but the two became friends during the shoot.
- The title of The Earrings of Madame de... points to the fact that the main character's surname is never revealed; whenever it might be heard or seen, noise or a camera trick hides it.
- In 2022, The Earrings of Madame de... was ranked 90th on Sight and Sound's critics poll of the greatest films, and Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright and Stanley Kubrick all listed it among their favorites, Kubrick possibly as his favorite of all time.
