“Coincidence is only extraordinary because it’s so natural,” a character says near the end of director Max Ophüls’ graceful, deceptively tragic late-career masterpiece. It’s a line that could ...

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones, Saint Teresa of Avila reputedly opined, but she never met Louise, Madame de… (Danielle Darrieux). For the vain, tragic heroine of Max ...

Last week I talked about movie criticism as seasonal work akin to fruit picking, except that fruit pickers don't pick fruit when they know it's rotten. Well, Inkheart may not be rotten to the core, ...

Ophüls spent a few frustrating years in Hollywood while the Nazis were in power in his native Germany, then moved to France after World War II and made four films noteworthy for their clever narrative ...

Danielle Darrieux, one of the great French movie stars, died Wednesday in Bois-le-Roi, France. She was 100. The star of director Max Ophuls’ classic early ’50s films “La Ronde” and “The Earrings of ...

SIFF Cinema this week presents a return of Max Ophuls’ gorgeous 1953 drama, “The Earrings of Madame de … “ Its gentle, sad merry-go-round of a plot, set in 19th-century Paris, involves the fate of an ...

Danielle Darrieux, one of the great French movie stars, died Wednesday in Bois-le-Roi, France. She was 100. The star of director Max Ophuls’ classic early ’50s films “La Ronde” and “The Earrings of ...

In the exquisite French film The Earrings of Madame De … (1953), the passage of a single pair of expensive diamond earrings through a succession of aristocratic hands is made to represent human folly, ...

Changing critical tastes haven’t been especially kind to La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), Madame de… (1953), and Lola Montès (1955). Madame de… finished joint 93rd on Sight and Sound’s 2012 poll of ...