Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

James Mason portrays author Gustave Flaubert on trial for his writing of Madame Bovary, on the charge of morality.Mason, in court, goes on to narrate the story of a woman, well played by Jennifer Jones, who grows up wanting more of life. Frustrated as she is, she seeks status while marrying Van Heflin, the country doctor. Her ability to succumb to ill-fated romances as well as running up debts leads to her inevitable downfall.As one of her lovers, Boulanger, Louis Jourdan forsakes his French accent. As the mother of one of her suitors, a failed clerk to an attorney, Gladys Cooper was able to reunite with Jones six years later after her memorable turn as the mean nun who make life so miserable for Jones in "The Song of Bernadette."We see beyond Mme. Bovary's imperfections to an imperfect world led by those who would destroy others for debts incurred.

Madame Bovary is directed by Vincente Minnelli and adapted to screenplay by Robert Ardrey from the Gustave Flaubert novel. It stars Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, Alf Kjellin, Gene Lockhart and James Mason. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Robert H. Planck.It's most interesting now watching Minnelli's picture and being able to place it in the time it was made. Also of major interest is reading up on what the critics of the time had to say about it. This version is an undoubted lesson in the technical crafts of film making, the visuals, the sound, art design, costuming and a literary pumped screenplay that allows the cast to play it classical. It's also black hearted, perfectly in keeping with the gathering storm of the era that was film noir.Here is the monster.Some of the complaints about the film, to me anyway, just don't add up. Why do we need to care about anyone in this story? It's a dark tale of illicit passions, greed, betrayals, bad parenting and etc. Is this frowned upon in some circles because of love for the classic novel? Or because there's some esteem held for other versions? The criticism of Jones is also very suspect given it's a classic femme fatale performance, Emma is cold and driven and shallow to others feelings, Jones works it perfectly.As Rózsa's beautiful lush and poignant musical arrangements drift and hover over the various story instalments, Minnelli brings the film making guile. His camera work is sublime, like a ghost moving about the characters for the more vibrant scenes, tracking and roving, dizzyingly beautiful. At others it's close and personal, imbuing Emma's claustrophobia, with the black and white contrasts superbly photographed by Planck.So it doesn't capture the essence of Flaubert's intent, then? Emma Bovary a figure of hate instead of sympathy, the lack of a caustic aside on a society of double standards? So what! Outstanding film making is just that, especially when it can tune into a style of film making prevalent at its birth. Madame Bovary - maybe the most film noir movie not actually considered a film noir. Brilliant. 9/10

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary is beautiful and shocking, one of the European literary greats. While it is not the most faithful adaptation around, Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary does stand on its own two feet and is a beautiful film in its own right. It does suffer from what made the book so complex and shocking not being fully allowed to come out due to the limitations of the Production Code at the time of it being made and released(maybe the film's length too). So you do miss the stuffiness and hypocrisy of French provincial life, which I always took as a crucial part to Emma's character, while the script could have done with more of a dark edge and Minnelli's direction is often dazzling and technically skilled(the ballroom sequence has to be a highlight in his directorial career) but also a little too relaxed in places, so the drama has occasional stodginess. But it is unfair to dismiss Madame Bovary due to these because its positives are a great many. That it is one of the most visually beautiful films of the 40s is one, the costumes are evocative and astonishingly elegant, Emma's dresses are a wow factor while the sets are the very meaning of grand with a Baroque/Roccocco influence. The photography dazzles just as much as Minnelli's technical style in the ballroom sequence(an intricate and in all senses wonderful scene, perhaps one of the greats in cinematic history). Miklos Rosza's music score is another huge part of the appeal, one of his best, the stylistic elegance, haunting undercurrent and energy are all here in the score, the Madame Bovary Waltz being the most memorable. The script may lack edge, but it does maintain the book's ironic humour and is very poignant too without descending into melodrama, and the story regardless of the watering down still compels and moves. Some may find Flaubert's narration and trial at the beginning unnecessary, to me it was actually very interesting- James Mason's thoughtfully earnest performance as Flaubert helps- and that the book itself caused a scandal at the time and is still controversial now made it further easier to understand why the book's depth doesn't quite come through here. The aforementioned ballroom sequence is the highlight of the film, but the deserted windswept streets in the middle of the night scene where Emma is waiting for Rudolphe is beautifully shot and emotionally telling. The performances are fine, Jennifer Jones is very moving(not to mention stunning to look at), she does capture the selfishness and insufferable woman traits that Emma has yet makes it clear Emma is also a victim of her own passions, it is very easy to not stand Emma and make her one-dimensional but with Jones there is a degree of compassion. Van Heflin is sympathetic and mild-mannered without being too much of a bore and oafish without being too much of a dork and clown, like with Jones both of those are easy traps to fall into. Louis Jourdan is perfectly cast, suave and charismatic while conflicted and menacing. Alf Kjellin is a gentle Leon, a good contrast to Jourdan's Rudolphe, while Gladys Cooper as ever is a scene stealer as is Frank Allenby as the malefic L'Hereux. Harry Morgan and Gene Lockhart are dependably solid. Overall, a beautiful film but those wanting a faithful adaptation of Madame Bovary(a big ask really as it is perhaps one of the most difficult books to adapt) may want to look elsewhere. But even then, there will be people who think that to some extent but still take this film for what it is. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, posited four types of personalities: the sensation type, the feeling type, the thinking type, and the intuitive type. Now, your typical sensation type (lecturer points to portrait of Madame Bovary) lives for the moment, switches allegiances on impulse, luxuriates in the indulgence of her sensory apparatus, cannot be depended upon, and is insensitive to the feelings of others except as they affect her. We may forgive a sensation type, but are we really supposed to like her? Says who? That's kind of how I felt about this story. I'd heard as a youngster that this was supposed to be a sexy novel. It was known as "Madame Ovary." So I struggled through it but it seemed boring. Maybe in French there were grace notes in the prose, absent from the English translation. But I really don't know how anything could have saved this from being a weeper.The viewer gets the general idea quickly enough because the narrator, James Mason, gives it to us right off the bat. The young, poor Emma Bovary (Jennifer Jones)is suffering an acute case of "Bovarism." She lives in a world of romantic fantasy, a kind of Ruritania of the mind, with dashing knights and love in Swiss chalets. Her walls are plastered with illustrations from fairy tales. And she never outgrows this world of make-believe.She doesn't have enough insight to know that marrying the devoted but dull village doctor (Van Heflin, in a good, bumbling performance)is not the answer. She attributes her dissatisfaction to her need for a child, a boy. She eventually has her child, but it's a girl and the girl rejects her in favor of her husband and her housekeeper. And who wouldn't reject Emma? Half the time she's hysterical, and the other half she's about to become hysterical. Anyway, the next thing you know, Emma has taken up with the local clerk and, when he's booted over to Rouen by his domineering mother, she takes up with the handsome, dashing, narcissistic, rich Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jordan). She decorates poor Doctor Bovary's house in expensive fabrics and furniture, borrowing secretly from a stone-faced usurer who will in the end bring her and her family down by selling the notes, which means bankruptcy for the Bovarys. She throws herself at the feet of an erstwhile lover and begs for money. "I haven't got it," he says, and throws her out. In an excess of self-pity (I didn't notice much in the way of guilt) she eats some arsenic and is called away to answer to a higher collection agency.The movie has one or two neat set pieces, directed by Vincent Minelli. There's the scene at the first ball to which the Bovarys are invited, the ball at which Emma first dances with Rodolphe and the awkward, anxious husband gets drunk. I'm not much for balls. Everybody gets dressed up and dances in circles. "I don't know how to waltz," Emma tells Rodolphe. Well, Emma, neither does anyone else now. In a college class I was trying to get across the notion of dialectics and asked for a volunteer from the audience to help me demonstrate the waltz step. No volunteers because nobody knew how to waltz -- or what a waltz was, for that matter. Minelli sets up this ball, though, so that it's not nearly as boring as most. The guys are boozing it up, the women look gorgeous in their elaborate Walter Plunkett gowns, and when one of the ladies feels dizzy from dancing, the host orders attendants to bash out the windows. There is also a wild wedding scene that might have come from Pieter Bruegel or maybe Sam Pekinpah's "Ride the High Country."Jennifer Jones is Emma with a breathless lisp. Van Heflin is nearly perfect as the humble, inarticulate doctor. (Doctors in the 1850s weren't as high in the status-sphere as they are today. If they had been, Emma would have been not only foolish to betray her husband but downright loco.) This role must have stereotyped Louis Jordan because he seemed to play little but the same pavonine French lover in film after film.However, although I may not have gotten very much out of it, others might. I haven't looked at the user's ratings but I'd be mildly surprised if women didn't give it a higher score than men. Sensation types of either gender are likely to switch channels before it's over.