EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

HotToastyRag I loved this movie! I wasn't really expecting to, since I'd seen the 2014 remake and was highly disappointed by the story and characters. In that version, the title character was incredibly unlikable and without motivation, her husband was unsympathetic, and her lover wasn't convincing. The 1949 version was fantastic! If you've never seen a film adaptation of the classic story, start with this one.Jennifer Jones is raised in a convent and pins all her hopes and dreams on getting married when she grows up. She reads romantic novels and believes she'll feel alive, wild, and sensational once she falls in love and gets married. This early portion of her life is very important to the story, because it sets up her character's motivations for the rest of the film. Plus, it's wonderful to see Jennifer transition from wide-eyed innocence to disappointment and maturity.When Jennifer falls in love with Van Heflin, she truly believes her life will follow the storybooks she read as a child. Instead of spoiled, immature, and bored-as she might have seemed if the beginning sequence was left out-Jennifer is heartbroken and dissolutioned with everything she every believed in. Then, when she meets the handsome cad Louis Jourdan, she thinks she'll find the passion she craves. . .I love Jennifer Jones and think she's a very fine actress; Madame Bovary is a classic Jennifer Jones vehicle. She's sweet and beautiful, easily influenced, can cry at the drop of a hat, and no matter what her character has done through the course of the film, you can't help but feel sorry for her and love her unconditionally. I don't usually love Van Heflin, but in this movie, I was almost reduced to tears by his performance. Robert Audrey wrote a wonderful script and made Van's character incredibly heart-wrenching. And when he's up against Louis Jourdan, it's important to have a strong foundation so the audience can understand Jennifer's conflict.Madame Bovary is a beautiful classic, full of intricate set designs and breathtakingly gorgeous costumes. Walter Plunkett and Valles were ignored by the Academy, though, and I have no idea why, since Jennifer's gowns are just as beautiful as those Walter designed for Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. I highly recommend watching this glamourous drama. You'll get to see beautiful people in beautiful clothes, narrated by James Mason's incredible voice. What else do you need?DLM warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. There's a scene where Jennifer is at a ball and when she dances, the camera spins. It will probably make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

edwagreen James Mason portrays author Gustave Flaubert on trial for his writing of Madame Bovary, on the charge of morality.Mason, in court, goes on to narrate the story of a woman, well played by Jennifer Jones, who grows up wanting more of life. Frustrated as she is, she seeks status while marrying Van Heflin, the country doctor. Her ability to succumb to ill-fated romances as well as running up debts leads to her inevitable downfall.As one of her lovers, Boulanger, Louis Jourdan forsakes his French accent. As the mother of one of her suitors, a failed clerk to an attorney, Gladys Cooper was able to reunite with Jones six years later after her memorable turn as the mean nun who make life so miserable for Jones in "The Song of Bernadette."We see beyond Mme. Bovary's imperfections to an imperfect world led by those who would destroy others for debts incurred.

MartinHafer This MGM film sure sports a terrific cast--Jennifer Jones, James Mason, Van Heflin and Louis Jordan! However, no matter how good the cast and production values are, this is a film that was very, very difficult to produce in 1940s Hollywood due to the restrictions of the Production Code. This code precluded the film from fully realizing Flaubert's novel, as frank discussions of sexuality were not possible--the film never would have been cleared for public exhibition. So, the studio softened it here and there--and reduced the impact any film about this book could have had. I am sure a more modern version of the book would be quite a bit different--ad Madame Bovary's infidelities been a lot less vague.The film begins with Dr. Bovary coming to Emma's home to treat her father. The Doctor is quite taken by her and eventually marries her--making her Madame Bovary. While quite pretty, there are some serious warning signs that went unnoticed. First, Emma was a bit childish and lived in a fantasy-sort of world where she expected real life to be like a romance novel! As a result, she's ill-equipped to deal with the boredom that comes with everyday life--as she expects constant passion, excitement and variety--not knowing even the rich and powerful live that way! Second, there is a huge disparity between the head in the clouds Emma and her rather nice but bland husband. He cannot possibly live up to her ridiculously high expectations of a man--and soon she goes searching for excitement on her own. Not surprisingly, she gravitates towards affairs, though in time, these, too, are unsatisfying--even lovers cannot always create excitement and distractions. Eventually, this leads to disaster and the story ends.Not surprisingly, many story elements have been omitted--some due to the code and some due to the confines of a full-length film. For example, the Doctor's first marriage and significant periods in Emma's life are absent--though the spirit of the book is mostly intact.While not exactly intended, the film seems to be an interesting portrait of what we might now consider to be a Borderline Personality or at least a person with strong Borderline traits. The inability to cope with boredom, interpersonal shallowness, the tendency to self-sabotage and craving for excitement and addiction (in this case, sexual and spending addiction) are all important hallmarks of this disorder. Such classifications were unknown in Flaubert's time, though he clearly seems to be describing such a person in Emma Bovary.There is only one problem with such a portrait, however. Emma Bovary is in no way sympathetic--she is selfish, vain and pretty stupid. And, to make things worse, her husband is an utter fool as well, as he willfully ignores his wife's 'excesses'. As a result, it's a lovely movie to watch (it is a very glossy MGM production) but its also detached and hard to love...much like Madame Bovary herself!

Steffi_P "What you try and create," the director Vincente Minnelli once said, "is a little magic". Like Madame Bovary, Minnelli's crime, if he had one, was wanting things to be beautiful. Producer Pandro S. Berman knew what he was doing when he hired Minnelli to shoot this adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's classic novel. Classic-era Hollywood was saturated with stories of apparently selfish women who ruin the men in their life, but Madame Bovary differs in that it gets us to understand and sympathise with its tragic heroine, even drawing parallels to our own desire for escapism through literature or cinema. And in the 1940s few pictures were as escapist as those of Minnelli.When you look at a Minnelli picture, his visual style is all about framing and defining beauty, be it Judy Garland singing at her window, a spectacular Ziegfeld stage set or recreations of fin-de-siecle artworks. For him, exquisite imagery was not simply a gloss – it was an aesthetic ideal that was at the heart of cinema. Yet for this picture, he frames beauty within the dreariness of reality, for example showing Jennifer Jones gazing out of the window of her dingy attic room on a glorious summer's day. But what is significant is that no matter how desperate the circumstances get, no matter how dark or cramped the interiors become, Jones is always magnificently dressed, and there is always somewhere a window onto a better world. In other words, he doesn't allow us to lose respect for the character or her romantic idealism. The real world may let us down, Minnelli seems to be saying, but he won't allow the concept of beauty itself to be dragged through the mud.The trouble with this version of Madame Bovary – and this is something common to many book-to-film adaptations – is that it is extremely bitty and repetitive. Novels are after all intended to be picked up and put down, whereas motion pictures must be swallowed in a sitting. Minnelli's flowing style may be designed to keep the audience constantly engaged on a visual level, but story-wise it is less likely to hold our interest. The acting performances are not exceptional – at least not by the standards of Jones and Heflin, and in any case we are not really able to focus on them within Minnelli's technical sweep.What we have here then is an adaptation that fails to assemble coherently the bones of the plot, but captures the essence of Flaubert's work and exhorts us to sympathise with the protagonist. The picture opens with a historical scene in which the author, played by James Mason, defends his creation by defending its heroine. This introduction as much as states that it is not enough to read what Emma did; we must understand why she did it. In this respect, Minnelli's Madame Bovary is a success on its own terms.