A spoiled and superficial woman, Louise has amassed large debts due to her lifestyle, so she arranges to secretly sell a pair of valuable heart-shaped diamond earrings that André gave her as a wedding present, but which she does not care for, back to the original jeweler, Rémy, disguising their disappearance by pretending to have lost them at the opera.

André accepts cheerfully and, rather than confront his wife, coolly gives the earrings to Lola, of whom he has recently grown tired, as a parting gift when seeing her off on a train to Constantinople.

Embarrassed, she announces that she will take a holiday in the Italian lake district, hoping the trip will calm her growing feelings for Donati.

When Louise cannot get Donati to withdraw from the duel, she goes to the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont to pray at the shrine of St. Geneviève that he be spared, leaving the earrings as an offering.

[5] With its glittering costumes and furnishings and swirling camera work, the montage of ballroom dancing scenes that represents the process of Louise and Donati falling in love in the film is a celebrated example of Ophüls' technique.

Annenkov designed the film's titular prop earrings, which were subsequently put on display at the Franco-London-Film production studios for many years.

"[13] In a 1961 article in Kulchur that was later reprinted in her first book, Pauline Kael praised the performances, "sensuous camerawork," "extraordinary romantic atmosphere," and "polished, epigrammatic dialogue.

"[14] When it was re-released in England in 1979, the film was received as a rediscovered masterpiece, with Derek Malcolm calling it "a supreme piece of film-making which hardly puts a foot wrong for 2 hours...a magnificent and utterly timeless dissection of passion and affection, the game of life and love itself."

The sleight of hand is dazzling, but fatally distracting...With a supple, ingenious, glittering flow of images that is aesthetically the diametric opposite of Mme.

de Vilmorin's chaste prose, he has made the film an excuse for a succession of rich, decorative displays...In all this visual frou-frou it is not surprising that the characters become lost and the interior development of the drama is almost completely unobserved.

"[15] In 2022, The Earrings of Madame De... was ranked as the 90th greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound's critics poll, and directors such as Wes Anderson and Edgar Wright listed it as one of their favorites.