Taken at face value, the French/Italian/British Earrings of Madame De... is a predictable romantic roundelay, based on a popular novel by Louise de Vilmorin. Countess Danielle Darrieux sells her valuable earrings, a gift from Charles Boyer, her military officer husband. Darrieux tells Boyer a different story, claiming that she lost the earrings while attending the opera. This story reaches the newspapers, whereupon the jeweler who bought the earrings resells them to Boyer--who chooses to say nothing of this, and gives the baubles to his mistress Lia Di Leo. While on holiday, Darrieux falls in love with diplomat Vittorio de Sica. He offers her a token of his esteem: the selfsame earrings, which he won from Di Leo at the gambling tables...and so it goes, until Darrieux's initial harmless deception ends in tragedy. It is not so much the story that matters as what is done with the story by master director Max Ophuls, he of the luxuriously liquid camera technique and complex tracking shots. The original 192 minute version of Earrings of Madame de... might be too much of a good thing for some viewers; these folks are advised to seek out the 105 minute version, retitled Diamond Earrings.