The Cinefamily (Venue Partner)
611 N Fairfax Avenue
323.655.2510
This event has passed.
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Earrings
- When
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Saturday Mar 20, 2010 (7:30–9:30pm)
- Where
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- Price
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$10
- Links
One of Max Ophuls’ wittiest depictions of boudoir intrigue, Madame De... proves that exquisite technique and elaborately orchestrated camera movements can be used as effectively for comedy as for tragedy. In this densely-plotted satire of marital fidelity, we follow the eponymous earrings as they are sold, gambled, gifted and grifted between an arrogant general (Charles Boyer), his impetuous wife (Danielle Darrieux), and her Italian aristocrat lover (Bicycle Thieves director Vittorio de Sica). As in Lola Montes and La Ronde, Ophuls uses ornate camera movements to depict desire as the ultimate currency of high society. Just as this desire defies the rigid social order, so too does Ophuls’ camera defy, as in the legendary ballroom sequence, the boundaries of space and time. The masterful staging of traveling shots is Ophuls’ claim to fame, and he surely doesn’t disappoint here, with dazzling extended displays of set design, choreography and performance from the very first shot to the last.
Dir. Max Ophuls, 1953, 35mm, 105 min.
