Madame Bovary

A Hollywood adaptation of Flaubert's novel. It opens with a curious frame: Flaubert himself is in court, on trial because his novel has been found immoral. The defence he gives becomes the narrative. That section rests on a real event; the author was prosecuted when the book appeared in 1857. Emma marries a country doctor. This is not the life she expected. She carries a world learned from novels in her head and real life keeps falling short of it. She runs into debt, starts searching, and pulls the people around her in with her. The best-known scene takes place at a ball. The room grows hotter, Emma cannot breathe, and in the middle of the waltz the windows are broken. The sequence was technically elaborate and became one of the most discussed pieces of its period. Jennifer Jones plays Emma and James Mason plays Flaubert. Vincente Minnelli directed. The censorship rules of the time required softening parts of the novel, and the film does so openly. A strong example for anyone who likes classical Hollywood melodrama and Minnelli's visual construction. For a viewer expecting a faithful adaptation, the film deliberately files down the hardness of its source.