Madame de …

Dir: Max Ophuls: France/Italy 1953 (105 mins)

For many, this piercingly poignant fin-de-siécle romance with its dark but exquisitely delicate sense of irony, is the very finest of Max Ophuls’ ‘amusing tragedies’. When beset by debt the titular Countesse Louise decides to sell a pair of earrings that were a wedding gift from her husband André she unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events that will have serious consequences. The lightly nuanced performances, the marvellously detailed sets and the elegant artifice of the plotting never distract from the fundamental seriousness of Ophuls’ searing study of fateful passion. “A film of unassuming but enduring greatness”.

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