Episode 285: THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (1953)

Layers of social prestige have assigned Comtesse Louise de [name redacted] (Danielle Darrieux) a role that doesn’t accommodate her wider range of human desire. She knows that paying a debt by selling her diamond earrings, gifted by her husband General André de… (Charles Boyer), will offend the hierarchical foundations of her way of life — a life of privilege and excess — so instead of admitting folly, she lies. She didn’t sell them; she lost them.

Thus starts a clear but ridiculous journey for THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… by director Max Ophüls. With each changing of hands (and ending up back in Louise’s), the earrings — once practically worthless to Louise — become the essential icon of her emotional independence beyond the material trappings of her opulent lifestyle.

In this episode, we discuss the movie’s contemporary reaction (which seems facile in retrospect), the misdirection that keeps the twisting plot moving, and its context as a movie set during France’s Belle Époque that was released just as French society realized it was entering the rearview.

References:

Watch THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… on the Internet Archive
“Of Earrings and Eras: The Earrings of Madame de… and Cinematic History” by Dan McCabe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
“Life Has a Funny Way: Tragicomedy and The Earrings of Madame de…” by Courtney Kowalke for Perisphere, the Trylon blog

Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/
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Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. “L’amour m’emporte” composed by Oscar Straus with lyrics by Louis Ducreux and performed by Danielle Darrieux.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 285: THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (1953)

3:36 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:32 - Recapping the winding plot

10:52 - The Belle Époque and the roles of high society

25:34 - Lubitsch-adjacency and the soft bigotry of “different” expectations

30:48 - The charm of the bourgeoisie

36:16 - Mirrors, the earrings, and the semiotics of objects given and received

49:08 - Dirty Donati

50:51 - The long take and cinematography that “misdirects”

1:00:10 - The ending

1:04:54 - The Junk Drawer

1:13:50 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1953

1:15:24 - Cody’s Noteys: The Peer Flings of Madame de… (actor/actress pairings trivia)