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"Perfection."
—Pauline Kael
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(1953)
Franco-London / Indusfilms / Rizzoli.
B&W, 105 minutes.
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Certainly one of the crowning achievements in film. Max Ophüls's gliding camera follows Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, and Vittorio De Sica through a circle of flirtation, passion, and disappointment, a tour that embraces both sophisticated comedy and high tragedy. Ophüls's camera style is famous for its physicalization of time, in which every fleeting moment is recorded and made palpable by the ceaseless tracking shots, yet his delineation of space is also sublime and highly charged: no director has better understood the emotional territory that exists offscreen.
—Dave Kehr
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Vittorio de Sica and Danielle Darrieux in Madame de... |
Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux on the cover of Cinémonde (19 June 1953) |
Direction: Max Ophüls.
Screenplay: Marcel Achard, Annette Wademant, and Max Ophüls, from the novel by Louise de Vilmorin.
Photography: Christian Matras.
Editing: Boris Lewyn.
Music: Georges Van Parys, and excerpts from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice.
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Danielle Darrieux...............................Countess Louise de...
Charles Boyer.......................................Général André de...
Vittorio de Sica.................................Baron Fabrizio Donati
Mireille Perrey...................................Madame de...'s Nurse
Jean Debucourt.................................M. Rémy, the jeweller
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Vittorio de Sica |
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