La souriante Madame Beudet

La souriante Madame Beudet (1923) ** (out of 4)

Germaine Dulac directed this French film about a husband (Alexandre Arquilliere) who likes to play a trick on his wife (Germaine Dermoz), which is him pulling a gun from his desk, holding it to his head and pulling the trigger. Of course, the gun is empty but this drives his wife to a panic and eats away at her.

THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET is pretty much a Feminist movie that doesn't have much of a story to it and I must say that it struggled to hold my attention throughout its rather short 42-minute running time. There are some good things to be found here including the cinematography as well as the direction, which I would say was strong and especially with some of the more nightmare-ish moments where the film slips into avant-garde territory.

With that being said, there's no question that the story itself is quite lacking as we basically just see a very unhappy housewife who is being tortured by this sick prank of her husbands. There's absolutely no character development on either character. There's really no drama either. There's just not that much that happens throughout the film except for the husband playing his joke on his wife.

I did think the two actors were good in their roles and as I said the film was well-made but it's just way too shallow to really work.

Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) lives in the province and her sneering, uncouth husband makes her life hell. He has bad table-manners and even his best friends find his habit of parodying suicide with an unloaded gun very dumb. He ridicules his wife who reads poetry and plays Debussy. He haunts her even in her dreams. All sorts of visions prey on Madame's mind and she sees herself loading the gun...with an unexpected but perhaps inevitable result.

One of those silent treasures that ARTE presents once a month. An impressionist film with well-contrived lighting-effects and emphatic performances. Don't miss it!

This film is only useful to those studying the French impressionistic style of film making or the issues surrounding women early this century. As a film it is throughly uninspiring. I saw it in film class and it demonstrated what I had been learning about but I would not recommend it to anyone who does not have an academic interest of some sort.

Its plot is simply recounts a few days in the life of a repressed French housewife. Its main focus is how Madame Beudet views her life and her histrionic husband. As you might have guessed the title is meant to be sarcastic.

The Smiling Madame Beudet / La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923) : Brief Review -

A great french expressionist silent feature and unlikely first truly feminist film. Even with unlikely probability of being first feminist drama The Smiling Madame Beudet can be termed as one at least for the French cinema. I remember watching D. W. Griffith's feminist films (in dramatic mode) made before this so i won't count it as one. The film is about a woman trapped in loveless marriage and it also explores several devastating moments from the woman's life. However, the captured version is soulless at the beginning, it gathers a solid momentum and connectivity in last 10 minutes. Those dream sequences, delusional obsession and never smiling face of the woman (even in the last frame of her) should be considered as a part of great filmmaking. And it is directed by pioneering 'avant-garde cinema' director Germaine Dulac, who, in my opinion wasn't able to put that famous non-narrative structure in this film. It was far away from intricate storytelling but that ultimately gave it an advantage to carry that it is rather more convincing and intense, exactly what the context required from it. The husband's character was well written if you see his own joke becomes the biggest turnaround of his life and at the same time the wife remains still even after wrong surmise and big tragedy. In a way i would have loved to see that much anticipated "Smile" on her face as mentioned in the title but there was not a single frame for it. Instead, it went in completely opposite direction to catch the realistic expressionism. So, yes it becomes an innovative product overall which is deservingly known by art cinema lovers and i would like to carry forward the recommendation.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest

Smilling Madame Beudet was a good short film that is first in history to have a real feminist message in it and it probably inspired many films in future because of that.In this film we are watching a woman that is unhappy in marriage and she wants to get rid of her husband but unfortunetly for her she fails in the end.Characters were her just little explored cause runtime is short but it worked very well in end.Smilling Madame Beudet was a good short film but it wasnt one of best that i seen