La souriante Madame Beudet

I studied Women and Film with author, Dr. Sandy Flitterman-Lewis at Rutgers University and this is one of the many films that we watched in the viewing. Germaine Dulac provided us a glimpse into the life of women in France during Pre-World War II era and Post World War I world. Paris was a city who loved the arts at the time and was thriving with literary salons and American expatriates as well. Germaine Dulac never captured as much attention but she should have been on league with her male counterparts like Jean Epstein and others. Sadly, the war and the depression may have ended her career like so many others. We can only imagine what might have been if Germaine Dulac had been given the same advantages that her male counterparts received during that time. But she was one of the lucky ones to get the experienced to direct such films like this that are controversial and eye opening as well. Language is not necessary since sound didn't come until the 1930s and Germaine's career went elsewhere.

"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!

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.

I discovered this title from the 1001 Movie List and didn't know anything about it, so I watched it cold and had a hard time following along with the plot. Eventually, things made sense by the end of the movie, but I wanted to give the movie a fair shake. So, after doing some research, it turns out, The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923), was picked for the 1001 list, because of its importance to film history, most notably the fact, that the film is considered as being the first feminist film ever made, which makes sense, once the plot is established. So, I decided to watch the film again, at least to the point, where I wasn't lost anymore.

As I started watching The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923), a second time (It's only 42 minutes long), the plot unfolded better for me. Our Madame lives in a lifeless, loveless marriage with an annoying guy, who has a weird sense of humor. His favorite joke eventually plays a big role in the overall plot, but that's all I will say about that. In fact, it is that part o the film, that saves this dull, slow-starting film and finishes it with a decent ending. Germaine Dermoz is the actress, who plays the depressed Madame Beudet. She delivers a pretty good performance. She has the facial expressions down, that actors/actresses had to master during the silent era. The expressions work just as good as words do, if done right. That is what made the silent era great. Faces speaking volumes. Beudet is able to express to us, the sadness she is going through. Along with director Germaine Dulac's impressionist, avant-garde camera-work, the acting work of Dermoz and the interesting ending, The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923), ends up being just good.

PMTM Grade: 6.2 (D+) = 6 IMDB.