Sightlines · reception
How The Earrings of Madame de... was received
1953 · Max Ophüls · The Earrings of Madame de... on Sightlines
The arc
In 1953 plenty of French critics waved it off as frivolous costume-drama fluff, all chandeliers and no soul. Decades of reappraisal later it's a fixture of greatest-films lists, and the old 'superficial' charge now reads as the film's own joke on its critics.
What’s debated
The eternal Ophüls debate: is that endlessly gliding camera pure decoration or the deepest expression of feeling in cinema — style AS substance, or instead of it?
Its footprint
Andrew Sarris spent decades calling it 'the most perfect film ever made,' a blurb so absolute it became the film's calling card — and a bar every rewatcher gets to argue with. Its swirling ballroom waltzes are shorthand for what a moving camera can do to romance.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of the cinephile canon — the 'you must see this' Ophüls, the film people hand you when they want to prove old movies can out-modern modern ones.
Did you know? The Baron is played by Vittorio De Sica — already world-famous as the director of Bicycle Thieves — who kept taking acting jobs partly to bankroll his own films.