Watch Madame Bovary For Free

i must have seen a different film!!

Admirable film.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I could never like Gustave Flaubert for his merciless realism completely void of any idealism, but as a realist he was one of the sharpest in France, wherefore a novel like "Madame Bovary" is perhaps best seen as a clinical and perfect documentary. As Gustave Flaubert said himself, there are thousands of Emma Bovarys all over France. At the same time, he confessed Emma Bovary to be himself. Here is a paradox and mystery worth investigating.Jennifer Jones as Emma, even better than Vivien Leigh as Anna Karenina, is the extreme opposite of Bernadette of Lourdes 6 years earlier, for which she was awarded an Oscar. Jennifer as Emma is the extreme idealist who lives only for her dreams and commits the mistake of trying to make reality her dreams. This is a very human and common mistake. Gustave Flaubert's own tragedy was perhaps that he could not indulge in committing that mistake himself. Instead, he indulged the more in giving Emma free reins to go to any length in that indulgence, in which he is very thorough in tearing her apart piece by piece. Is this cruelty or realism? It is perhaps cruelty excused by realism, but it's definitely realism and unassailable as such.Van Heflin is reliably honest in his part as usual and makes a thoroughly impeccable impersonation of a perfectly normal and honestly boring man. As in the novel, he is impossible not to put horns on. He is too honest for his own good.Her case starts when she gradually more and more find her ideals incompatible with the reality she is confined to and finds more and more like a prison. Her only cure is escapism into her dreams, trying obsessively to drown the unbearable pettiness of her naked reality in luxury - and the first lover, the handsome Leon, played by the handsome Swede Alf Kjellin, perfect for that part, like almost another Axel von Fersen.To all this comes Vincente Minnelli's amazing direction. He had almost only made show films before, and here suddenly he is as psychologically brilliant and poignant as another Hitchcock. The great ball scene, when she first meets Louis Jourdan, is Vincente Minnelli in full bloom combining splendid festivity with dark undercurrents of impending tragedy, impressively illustrated by the crushing of windows and glasses, as poor Van Heflin, drunk, searches for his wife, as if he unconsciously already knew he had lost her....The music (Miklos Rosza) is also perfect as everything else in this film, Frank Allenby is terrible in his handsome ruthlessness as her creditor, and Gladys Cooper comes sailing in as the perfect mother spoiling everything, almost compelling Emma to adultery by her puritan insistence, and then comes Louis Jourdan opening the abyss with his insolent superiority...James Mason introduces and ends the film as Gustave Flaubert himself, defending himself and Emma at court, with as eloquent a brilliance as everything else in this film. You certainly should see it again sometime.

I'm a big fan of Vincent Minnelli's films and had saved this one for a rainy day and the pleasure seeing another take on a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I lived in France for many years and could imagine a Norman village within striking distance of Rouen. The village looks like something from Disneyland and the "French" characters as French as fries at McDonald's. I would have to admit that Jennifer Jones is gorgeous to look at but even her beauty can't rescue this Hollywoodized attempt at Kulcha". The scene at the dance was entirely too long and drawn out and the mirrors throughout the film were forced and contrived. Of course, the criticism of Emma's behavior were necessary to please the censors but the film turns into a diatribe against her morals that reaches American Puritanical hysteria. Those of us who read the book in its original language can vouch for the fact the Mme Bovary's village was claustrophobic and the people could be crude - not as crude as in the film where their crudity reached the absurd. We wouldn't think for a moment about changing Thomas Hardy's novels to fit the code, but both he and Flaubert showed their countries as they really were, without the embellishment of prettifying or laundering. What a disappointment,helas...Curtis Stotlar

This MGM film sure sports a terrific cast--Jennifer Jones, James Mason, Van Heflin and Louis Jordan! However, no matter how good the cast and production values are, this is a film that was very, very difficult to produce in 1940s Hollywood due to the restrictions of the Production Code. This code precluded the film from fully realizing Flaubert's novel, as frank discussions of sexuality were not possible--the film never would have been cleared for public exhibition. So, the studio softened it here and there--and reduced the impact any film about this book could have had. I am sure a more modern version of the book would be quite a bit different--ad Madame Bovary's infidelities been a lot less vague.The film begins with Dr. Bovary coming to Emma's home to treat her father. The Doctor is quite taken by her and eventually marries her--making her Madame Bovary. While quite pretty, there are some serious warning signs that went unnoticed. First, Emma was a bit childish and lived in a fantasy-sort of world where she expected real life to be like a romance novel! As a result, she's ill-equipped to deal with the boredom that comes with everyday life--as she expects constant passion, excitement and variety--not knowing even the rich and powerful live that way! Second, there is a huge disparity between the head in the clouds Emma and her rather nice but bland husband. He cannot possibly live up to her ridiculously high expectations of a man--and soon she goes searching for excitement on her own. Not surprisingly, she gravitates towards affairs, though in time, these, too, are unsatisfying--even lovers cannot always create excitement and distractions. Eventually, this leads to disaster and the story ends.Not surprisingly, many story elements have been omitted--some due to the code and some due to the confines of a full-length film. For example, the Doctor's first marriage and significant periods in Emma's life are absent--though the spirit of the book is mostly intact.While not exactly intended, the film seems to be an interesting portrait of what we might now consider to be a Borderline Personality or at least a person with strong Borderline traits. The inability to cope with boredom, interpersonal shallowness, the tendency to self-sabotage and craving for excitement and addiction (in this case, sexual and spending addiction) are all important hallmarks of this disorder. Such classifications were unknown in Flaubert's time, though he clearly seems to be describing such a person in Emma Bovary.There is only one problem with such a portrait, however. Emma Bovary is in no way sympathetic--she is selfish, vain and pretty stupid. And, to make things worse, her husband is an utter fool as well, as he willfully ignores his wife's 'excesses'. As a result, it's a lovely movie to watch (it is a very glossy MGM production) but its also detached and hard to love...much like Madame Bovary herself!

"Madame Bovary" (1949) directed by Vincente Minnelli is now almost a so rare look as one of the versions of an old book that Flaubert as writer was on trial to make an open speech where he justifies the heroin of XIX Century when Karl Marx was still writing Contribution to the Critic of Political Economy. If it is in 1857 that occurs the main action of the plot in this movie adapted from the stylishly innovative novel, round the next years or even before this date anyway in Normandy, because this movie it is constructed as a flashback - within a court where a famous free expression trial it is subject of the dream's conception of this character from imagination, with his creator's speech about reality concerning equality of opportunities to print a given written fiction about sexuality, obliging dependence from a genre to another in the bourgeois couple at the time -, which in itself is never too much for the ambitious portrait of the hypocrisy of that same society, as universal reference in past history of morality, as well understood here for academic's proposals anyway around the world. Minnelli in rarely black and white had a figure of style very nice when in the scene of Madame imagining as though far away, when simultaneous drinking champagne before her husband - and that precisely in this moment - she asks for dance by her behavior another man than her doctor, it is still as noble intention of course. But instead, even imagining it on a novel, it was by no means a crime against Puritanism by the transfer of the character of a young woman, who needs life and sex because her body is free of conventionality. Nor prostitution concealed in the society as the mental disease of women condition. Apparently in this movie Minnelli is quite moralist at the time, when by his model shows us a character of a tiny woman, gentle but enough alienated in her own self esteem. Because by this story she lost too much quick her own mind in the situation where she was, after born her daughter for refusing the child from her doctor and husband to the care of a maid in a rich mansion. Yes. By this way Mrs.Bovary wins a new style of maternity indeed, even by no means it seems critically ill for the society at the time. Instead this is which allowed to her a new kind of glamor as woman searching her desire out of the marriage, protecting young fellows, dandies and even burglars from the high society of 1857, between speculative capital and its accumulation. It is also in 1857 that by each proper way either in the social and in the fiction were like unexpected fellows of universal feelings and thoughts, concerning the upper classes and women as the weak side of the working development, that affects here the provincial middle class. That took one big part of sharing in such technological discoveries the opportunity at the time - in this region of Europe decisive for the industrial revolution coming from Britain - with the opening of the market and affects with it for all, before rigid norms of conduct in society and religious condition of safe.