La souriante Madame Beudet

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.

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.

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.

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.