3/1/2024 0 Comments Instal Madame Bovary free![]() ![]() Van Heflin is such a nice guy here that we are waiting for someone to smack Emma to her senses. Two actors added the final touch of class to the 1949 version. More importantly, Emma is seen sympathetically despite being hopelessly self-focused. Although narration can be a lazy device in film, in this case, Mason's mellifluous voice puts us in the picture quickly. The filmmakers used the trial to allow Gustave (James Mason) to narrate the story - quoting passages of Flaubert's prose. He got off and of course the book became a bestseller. Apparently the story so outraged the French hierarchy that they took old Gustave to court. The film is bookended with the trial of Gustave Flaubert who wrote the original novel. There are tears before the final fade out. ![]() Emma attracts men like moths to a flame, and cheats on her husband who still loves her despite everything. In an era before credit cards, she maxes-out on credit notes. However she soon outspends her husband's capacity to earn. She marries a country doctor Charles Bovary (Van Heflin) who she doesn't really love hoping to advance her standing in society and pursue her romantic dreams. Emma Bovary (Jennifer Jones) is the beautiful daughter of a poor French family, but she has an overactive imagination fostered by romantic novels. It wasn't until later, when we got television, that I saw the movies she made earlier in her career "Song of Bernadette, "Duel in the Sun", "Portrait of Jennie", "Carrie" and this one: Vincente Minnelli's "Madame Bovary". She was a bit older than my mum, and although I liked her she didn't have the effect on a prepubescent lad that Yvette Mimieux or Tuesday Weld were having. I cut in on her at a certain stage in her career. Jennifer Jones was a star I knew well from visits to the cinema with my family during the 1950's: "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit", "The Barretts of Whimpole Street", "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" and "A Farewell to Arms". ![]()
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