The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)

Bradshaw calls the film a great, praising its elegant, gripping storytelling and erotic mystery. He especially singles out its fluid camerawork and superb trio of performances.

Brennan offers a strongly positive appraisal, calling the film a masterpiece whose insights remain striking. He singles out Ophuls’ graceful, fluid visual style and the way it uses surface elegance to examine gender and romantic conventions.

Kehr’s review is strongly positive about Ophüls’s film. It singles out the director’s elegant, fluid visual style for praise.

Huddleston gives the film a positive four-star assessment. He singles out its distinctive structure, which shifts from sunny aristocratic comedy toward darker drama.

Bowen finds the film’s view of love and social convention unusually nuanced, while judging the Criterion release not quite stellar. He praises the vibrant mono soundtrack and Ophüls’s expressive tracking shots, but criticizes the transfer’s lack of detail and overly scrubbed skin textures.

Murray presents the film positively as the culmination of themes developed in Ophüls’ earlier work. He singles out its style, tone, and music for capturing characters who feel independent but are swept along by passion and circumstance.

The review finds the film delicately made but weighed down by dated attitudes and lifeless characters. It praises Ophüls’s careful photographic framing and the cast’s restrained performances.

The critic calls it the collection’s most emotionally resonant film. They single out its choreographed ballroom sequence and the expressive glances of Darrieux and De Sica.

The critic finds the film beautiful but ultimately unconvincing and superficial. She singles out the earrings’ increasingly predictable returns as an infuriating plot device.