MovieChat Forums > Madame de... (1954) Discussion > Whatever happened with her debts?

Whatever happened with her debts?

posted 12 years ago by clawpal28
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Well, first of all, excuse my English, as this is not my mother tongue.
O.K, so Madame de... decides to sell her earrings so she can pay her debts. She agrees a prize with Monsieur Remy, the jeweller, who will bring her the money the following day at five when her husband, the general, is absent from home. But instead, Remy takes the jewells to the general after reading in the newspaper the story of the "robbery". The general then gives them to his ex lover as a farewell present and they end up in Constantinopla. But Madame de... is unaware of all this. So she must have been waiting for Remy to show up with the money as they had agreed in the jewellery the day before. But of course he never went to see her with the money for her debts, which are not mentioned anymore. Whatever happened with them? And why didn't she go to the jewellery to find out what was happening? She would have learnt then that her husband knew the true story about the "lost" earrings.
Is this a weakness in the plot or is there someting I have missed?

[–] allenrogerj 12 years ago

Mme de...has sold the jewels to Remy, as you say. There is no reason to doubt that Mme de... has received the money. You assume that the newspaper reports appeared the day after Mme de... met Remy, when there's no reason to think that. The problem is that Mme de... pre-emptively explains their absence by saying she lost them. As a result, Remy could either be accused of receiving stolen property or have difficulty selling them: the obvious solution is to sell them to General de... again, which he does.
The scenes reveal a lot about General and Mme de...- that the General regards his wife as a possession, like the earrings, that their relationship is based on convention rather than affection, that the General is concerned with social ritual rather than affection and that Mme de...tells lies even when she does not need to and complicates things as a result.