Madame Bovary (1949)

Madame Bovary is a 1949 MGM adaptation, directed by Vincente Minnelli, of Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel.

Despite the Production Code Hollywood was well aware that what audiences wanted was sex and sin. They could not offer them those things so they perfected the art of the tease. In this case they’ve even added a framing story covering Flaubert’s trial for obscenity. This is a movie based on a novel so wicked that even in France it was labeled obscene! That’s a surefire way to get bums on seats.

There’s also voiceover narration supposedly by Flaubert. Along with the framing story this has an odd distancing effect since he is not telling us about something that happened, but merely about imaginary events from his novel. The framing story is a disastrously stupid idea, making the audience feel less involved and less interested.

With Madame Bovary the problem was just how far could the tease go without arousing the ire of the Production Code Authority? Unless certain things are made clear (namely the heroine’s adultery) the story won’t make sense, but they have to be made clear without being brought right out into the open. In this case a discarded hat tells us that hanky-panky has taken place.

This is the story of Emma (Jennifer Jones), who marries a humble country doctor, Charles Bovary (Van Heflin). Emma has spent her girlhood immersed in a world of dreams - dreams of adventure, excitement and romance. She does not cope well with the reality of life as the wife of an obscure village doctor.

She has a serious flirtation with a young law clerk. Things get more dangerous when she and her husband are invited to the Marquis D’Andervilliers’ ball. She meets Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan). He is impossibly dashing and handsome. He is the dream lover she always wanted.

The ball is an opportunity for Minnelli to give us a bit of a master class in film directing. Couples are whirling on the dance floor. Emma and Rodolphe are whirling, whirling, whirling. Emma doesn’t know it but her life is now whirling as well, like a mad dance. It gets more and frenzied and then there are the windows - I won’t spoil it by telling you what happens with the windows but it’s a brilliant moment of madness. This is a ball from a nightmare and it’s the highlight of the movie.

If you’re going to do a melodrama you must not hold back. You have to go for broke. Minnelli knew this.

Jennifer Jones also knew this (as anyone who has seen Duel in the Sun can attest). So did Louis Jourdan. And Van Heflin is absolutely perfectly cast as the bewildered husband.

Emma Bovary is certainly a very bad girl. Her husband cannot sweep her off her feet and she needs to be swept off her feet but he is a good man and a good husband. There are no mitigating circumstances there for her betrayal. And we must be sceptical as to whether he loves Rodolphe - she is in love with a dream and with the dream life she thinks he can offer her. There are lots of mirror shots, suggesting that Emma is somehow outside of real life. Which she is. She is in her fairy tale world of dashing princes.

The Emma Bovary of this movie is not a femme fatale. She’s not clever enough or focused enough. She gets herself into trouble not so much through scheming and duplicity but rather through recklessness and stupidity. She has the mind of a naïve selfish little girl but the sexual allure of a very grown-up temptress. All her schemes are childish. She is doomed by her inability to understand that fairy tales and romantic fantasies lead to disaster when they run up against reality.

It was presumably the Production Code that led to the decision to make Emma a woman driven by greed rather than lust. It’s a movie that needed to be a bit more sleazy but MGM obviously were not prepared to take such a risk.

My big issue is that the character of Rodolphe doesn’t ring true, and the Emma-Rodolphe relationship doesn’t ring true. I can’t help suspecting that changes had to be made to the script and that this might have cued the problems. Unfortunately it mens that a crucial late scene comes across as odd and puzzling.

The film was a major box-office flop and it has never been deemed worthy of critical reevaluation. It’s a flawed but interesting melodrama, better than its reputation would suggest. Recommended.