The Earrings of Madame De . . .

On Anthony Lane's recommendation (via The New Yorker), we went to see The Earrings of Madame De . . . at Film Forum. Right now New York critics are having a well-deserved love affair with this tragic tale of love and loss set in early 1900s Paris, made in 1953 and featuring Max Ophul's signature tracking shots ( which Kubrick apparently borrowed for The Shining).

As the movie opens, a countess sells off a pair of earrings given to her by her husband on their wedding night. He winds up buying the earrings back, then gives them to his lover as she departs for Constantinople. Eventually the earrings are returned to the countess, a gift from her lover, played to handsome effect by Vittorio De Sica.

It's sad and gloomy and heartbreaking---emotional effects emphaszied by candelight interiors and low-note scores. Even as we loathe the countess for her vanity and materialism, it's impossible not to hope that things might work out between her and her lover, or even between her and her husband, who has the two best lines in the movie: "We're only superficially superficial," and "Unhappiness is our own invention. At times I'm sad I lack the imagination for it."