Directed by Max Ophuls, France/Italy. Here’s an absolute classic, or so we are told by proper critics like Roger Ebert, David Thomson, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael. I’ve just finished the movie and read all their writings on it, but sorry guys, you’re going to have to do a much, much better job at trying to convince me this is one of the finest achievements that cinema can offer. When writing about MADAME DE…, people like to talk about the fluidity of Ophuls’s camera but, come on, this was 1953; there’s nothing especially innovative going on here. If you like cornball melodramas involving rich people agonising about earrings, you may enjoy it. I sniff a case of the emperor’s new clothes… 1/5.
MOVIES THAT DIE SCREAMING 