The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 23-29
The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)
Directed by Max Ophüls
Max Ophüls’s last finished film, Lola Montès, was released in 1955; Earrings was his penultimate outing, a period piece based on a forgettable short story, chronicling the affairs of a married society woman (Danielle Darrieux) with no name we need to know. And yet the picture proves as durable as a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings, which form the pivot of the plot, altering in significance each time they’re sold; the full turn is from convention to obsession—or sentimentality to love; critics don’t quite agree. Seemingly redeemed by Vittorio De Sica’s lovestruck Baron Donati, the earrings finally outlast all the players and wind up in a glass case, on display: a layering of brilliant reflections, and beneath, mute, indestructible rock. Elina Mishuris (September 27, 3pm, 8pm; September 28, 12:30pm, 3pm, 5:40pm at Film Forum’s De Sica retrospective)