Just like many other artists in Europe, the Nazi threat was becoming apparent to Max Ophuls, and consequently after the Reichstag Fire he took to France instead. He would then embark on a journey throughout Europe trying to evade the Nazis while creating movies along the path before finally taking refuge in Portugal and moving to America. Finally, Ophüls would settle down in Hollywood for a few years before going back to Europe after the WWII had ended in 1950. He is most accredited for this period as it was when he created his most praised feature film, The Earrings of Madame De…
Just before WWI us, we see Louise (Danielle Darrieux) who is an aristocrat who is married to a count and general in the French Army, Count Andre (Charles Boyer). They are courteous but still don’t display any kind of passion towards each other, we presume for civil reasons. The couple does not bear any children and sleep in a large room separate from each other to maintain distance. Due to being married into a rich family, Louise herself is in a lot of debt.
In order to pay for her debts, Lousie decides to sell the wedding diamond earrings. So that Andre doesn’t find out about her operation, she dresses up to conceal it and ends up selling it to the same jeweler who Andre sells it to. During their next meeting, Andre’s wife says that the earrings are gone and she will never wear them. Later, she comes up with an elaborate scheme to aid Andre into thinking those earrings are lost.
When a jeweler talks to Andre, the earrings are returned to her and her husband, Mentioning that he bought her a new pair that she will use when going on holiday to Constantinople. Following a bad run at the casino, Louise gives them the rings to a jeweler in the area. Italian diplomat Baron Donati (Vittorio De Sica) living in the city buys them. Louise is in Paris, and Donati is here too. Louise and Donati’s wildest dreams come true, and they find love in one another’s arms. They start to get romantically involved despite their best efforts to keep Andre in the dark. For some time everything will remain as it is, but Louise’s secrets will eventually come to light, and this will completely change everything in her life forever.
One of them is the novel, which revolved around the earrings as narrative framework for the plot, which always seemed to leave the orbit of Louise but reappeared again in ways that were not anticipated. The earrings explain everything that has been left unsaid between her and her husband regarding how love has been eroded in their equation. Ophüls is reported to have said that she regularly had conversations with Darrieux in between the takes and a common subject of their discussions was the character of Louise having a hollowness, and ways in which the emptiness could be portrayed through to the screen.
She has no personality other than her shopping habits that her partner nurtures. This hedonistic lifestyle has stripped Louise of her humanity.
The two figures that Louise oscillates between epitomize the conflicting forces that reside within her. While they belong to the upper-class, their treatment of her is entirely different. Donati is the object of her yearning and her first taste of true love and passion. Meanwhile, Andre, who is a soldier and also the one responsible for the deaths of several characters, or at least those Lee’s character killed, represents death. Both Masculine Andre and feminine Donati epitomize pleasure and control, respectively. It is reflected in the manner in which the two men sit opposite each other: Donati, cigarette dangling from his lips, slouches while Andre straightens up in his stiff military attire and medals. Their perspectives when viewing the same situation are so diverse. The movie switches between Louise’s perspectives to highlight the good and the bad of the two paths.
The movie takes a much larger idea of existentialism if we try to analyze the movie further. What is the consequence of us mistaking coincidence or strategy for fate and vice versa? The earrings speak to these issues as Louise and Andre continually pretend to ‘lose’ them while subtly antagonizing each other. It gets even more messy when the earrings become a gift from Donati, making Louise and us think about what their meaning is now. Are they still geared emotionally towards Andre, or they don’t feel anything for him now? The moment death arrives, the significance of the earrings changes yet again. They now, like Schrodinger’s Cat are encased in a glass pane with only one suitor. Who that is, is what Ophüls masterfully hides, which is the reason why the ending is so emotionally charged. This crisis went on during the limbo, but now with time, a decision has been made.
This film uses camera techniques that they fourteen years later recognized as techniques used by other artists, for example: the camera is a free floating device, moving around quite liberally. It’s a bit of a Stradicam, although there’s an impetus to push the device to work in that way. In funny words of origin, “Ophuls submits time by serving a collage of several ballroom dances”. From Louise and Donati’s simple dances over weeks (minutes of a film) the course of events and their relationships is written out. Such dances are reflected in mirrors, which breaks the body and its movements. Choreographically combined with spinning motions, waltzes become a period in these people’s lives in movement, ceaseless parade without a destination.
As a matter of fact, I think the Finding Earrings of Madame De… in fact possesses an elegant touch that I find hard to locate in the picture of our time. In a comedy drama setting, here is another set of characters living in excess and aspiring to great things but their lies are nothing to be looked up to for. Sadness and depression blankets their existence yes, but only moments, except at the very distant parts of their lives, when someone gets carried away by passion and then life once again comes stark bare. Ophuls has no concern in establishing whether his focal character achieves a happy ending.
That would surely be deceitful and aggravating for her. The director intends to bring all to an end, he wants Louise to be free no matter how badly it would affect her.
It is worth mentioning that during the women’s liberation movement in 1960s and 70s, a completely new assessment of Ophüls’s work was done, in the same way as Sirk’s work was. They were “female” directors, meaning that their work was not “important”. Yet, once the idea changed, people and critics started seeing the beauty of a woman’s life and the tragedy of it all that was ignored.
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