La souriante Madame Beudet

"La Souriante Madame Beudet" is mostly interesting and a classic because of its unusual and daring theme, for its time. Back in the '20's women rights weren't exactly regarded as the most important or relevant things, to put it mildly. Women were often oppressed and restrained in their marriage, to mainly only household chores, as is shown in this movie about a woman who is trapped in a loveless marriage.

Of course there is not much to the story, it's just purely about its theme. The movie follows the life of the husband and wife over a couple of days, in which she gets humiliated and has to do humiliating chores for her husband. She starts thinking about taking revenge but the intelligent woman is soon stricken with remorse. The movie shows the position of the woman in everyday life and it of course does so by exaggerating things to make its point. Normally we only know French movies for its perfect and romantic love stories. This is a whole different piece of cake.

The movie is made in a style-full fashion, which makes the movie really interesting to watch, even for todays standards. The movie has some interesting camera positions, such as a couple of over-shoulder shots. But also the storytelling is interesting and style-full, such as in the sequences were the husband is faking emotions and in the background the mirror opens with a couple of hand-puppets playing the exact same scene, with the words 'all theater' appearing. It makes the imaginative Germaine Dulac directing also one of the highlights of the movie.

Alexandre Arquillière is brilliantly repulsive as the husband and Germaine Dermoz is great as the obviously more intelligent wife. There are a couple of more characters but the movie does a good job at concentrating mostly purely on the two main character were after all the movie and its plot is all about of course.

In todays perspective, the movie is both interesting and beautiful to watch.

8/10

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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!

French female director Germaine Dulac appeared to take Jean Epstein's articles to heart when she released 1923's "The Smiling Madame Beudet." Like Epstein, her plot is threadbare, about an unhappy wife who first intends to kill her husband, seeing an opportunity in his habit of taking a gun whenever he's frustrated and pretending to shoot himself in the head. She places a real bullet in the chamber of his gun, but realizes through a dream it's not the right thing to do. She attempts to extract the bullet but is thwarted by constant interruptions.

"The Smiling Madame Beudet" has been cited as cinema's first feminist film because the protagonist isn't taking an unhappy marriage passively. Dulac, a leading figure of feminist rights and activism in France, wrote of the downtrodden position of contemporary women. With support from her husband Louis-Albert Dulac, an agricultural engineer, whom she divorced in 1920, she embarked on a 30-film career from 1915 through 1935. Her most important work was "The Smiling Madame Beudet," (who ironically is not once seen smiling in the 40-minute picture).

Through close-up images of the husband (Alexandre Arquilliere) and wife (Germaine Dermoz), Dulac is able to convey the anger coming from the spouse while Madame Beudet's blank face shows an apathy towards him. Her expressions become more animated as the movie progresses, reaching a peak as the final sequence unfolds.

Since every scene takes place in the interior of their home and office, "The Smiling Madame Beudet" doesn't reflect the gritty exterior atmosphere of Epstein's "The Faithful Heart." But the realism shown by Dulac of the marriage is as realistic as Epstein's film, hitting to the core the many frustrations couples have in communicating with one another. So important is Dulac's movie that it is included in "1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die."

I know a lot of what happens in marriages are weird, but to have a story where the husband continually as a sort of running gag puts a gun to his head and "pretends" he's going to shoot himself to control his wife or make her comply with him as he laughs his ass off, only for her (in her abject misery) finally just loads up the gun (it's usually blank) when he's not around is uh... jeez.

Thankfully, Dermoz gives an astonishing performance as maybe the first truly naturalistic depiction or a miserable feeling sort of wife, like it feels more modern than what was likely being done in the Silent era (nothing histrionic or melodramatic, just someone who looks so sad, even when she can cuddle with her cat), and Arquilliere as the husband is a brilliant scumbag.

I'm not sure what else I should take from this, aside from how the old phrase Something's Got to Give and that this coming from a female perspective gives it an extra charge of necessary vitriol. But there are some fascinating dreamlike visuals of the wife picturing her husband as a sort of laughing demon in her home, and how director Dulac has Dermoz brush her hair with such melancholy in front of the three mirrors are inspired.

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.