Louise (Danielle Darrieux), a wealthy Parisian aristocrat desperately and secretly in debt, sells the diamond earrings her husband, Andr\u00e9 (Charles Boyer), a famed general, gave her as a wedding gift. Following an amusing and cleverly plotted series of lies and revelations, the earrings come back into Andr\u00e9’s possession \u2014 he knows she sold them and why, but decides to let her go on thinking she got away with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, Andr\u00e9 gives the earrings to his mistress as she leave Paris for Constantinople (not Istanbul<\/a>). Following a bad streak at the roulette wheel, she pawns them, and, well, they change hands a couple more times from there. You get the idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on the Criterion Collection’s blurb and the plot up to this point, I was expecting Max Oph\u00fcls\u2019s \u201cMadame de…” to continue as a series of vignettes, following the earrings as they passed from person to person like “The Red Violin<\/a>” or “Twenty Bucks<\/a>.” Instead, the diamonds boomerang almost immediately back into the life of Louise and Andr\u00e9, where they come to symbolize a budding passion between Louise and Fabrizio Donati (Vittorio De Sica), a visiting Italian diplomat who buys the earrings from a Constantinople pawn broker, and the conjugal discontent triggered by their love triangle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Opening almost as a light farce, \u201cMadame de…” becomes heavier as is progresses, carried by its brisk dialogue, the charisma of the three leads, and Oph\u00fcls\u2019s elegant, understated direction. In one standout sequence, Louise and Donati’s deepening romance is dramatized as a ballroom dance through time. It’s a literal courtship \u2013 taking place entirely in the context of court life, hidden in the plain sight of opulent balls and by Louise’s reputation as an incorrigible but harmless flirt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n