Discussion on The Smiling Madame Beudet
My essay:
Psychological exploration was central to the ideology of French Impressionist filmmakers. Germaine Dulac used camera work and editing showing memories and flashbacks in The Smiling Madame Beudet(Germaine Dulac, 1923) so we could feel the psychological torment of Madame Beudet. Other French Impressionist filmmakers also used film to show memories and flashbacks, but her style was different than Herbier for example in L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier, 1924). Herbier instead uses filters to change the colors of things that are memories.
One scene that shows her special style is this clip:
This is a memory of her experience of seeing the play Faust, much different to her husband’s memory. Faust by Goethe was a great pick from literature to choose. In the picture you’ll see the character Gretchen is turning up her hand to reject Faust. At first appearance, one can think that it is her in the picture holding up her hand to stop the singer that looks like her husband with a moustache.
In the version I know of Faust, Gretchen is a young woman who rejects an older man. He then sells his soul to the devil to become young to attract her. She gets together with him and he gets her pregnant and ruins her life. It’s the story of her marriage in that she’s foolishly married and old man and he has ruined her life. It was great to pick that one image of the play paralleling her life.
In Dulac's style she beautifully synthesizes other art as well. She chose Debussy for Madame Beudet to play. He was one of the most famous French Impressionist musicians of the time. As she plays Debussy’s Water Under the Rain she also imagines rain in the garden in a visual edit. A beautiful nod to music of the time.
Impressionists played with light and Dulac uses blackout backgrounds to clear the space and keep the images hyper-illuminated to focus on what she wants you to see and feel.
This shot looks like she superimposed a large profile on the left with a farther back shot on the right. It doesn’t look like they could be on the same set due to the to their spatial relationship. This is also an example of her photogénie. Something purely visual where she transforms these images in her subjective way, unlike a photograph.
2/27/2021
Student responses to my essay and my return replies to them.
Vincent Cheng:
The mention and presence of the theater and the play, I think, is another aspect of the film that attempts to synthesize or at least incorporate certain aspects of the theater as an art form. I wonder whether Madame Beudet’s decision not to go to the theater to see Faust (with her husband) implies a rejection of the theater by the Impressionists who thought of the theater as less capable than the cinema of conveying characters’ subjectivity as the Impressionists’ films did.
My response:
Hi Vincent,
That is such an interesting point. I remember in the readings that the impressionists felt film was the opposite of theater. The two references to theater are not favorable - it was mainly the over acting that they were against.
Interesting how she threw symbolic items in her film.
Wyatt Williams:
Hi Ida,
I had originally planned to focus on this part of the film as well and would broaden the discussion to include the entire exchange between the couple. This back and forth that follows from M. Beudet’s invitation to the theater gives the audience insight into their mindsets of their relationship. I thought that the cuts away to their thoughts was an imagination of what kind of future experience they would have if they went to the theater, rather than a memory. His is one that he imagines as enjoyable, hers is not. I thought this scene captured the visual rhythm that the Impressionist filmmakers were striving for. (I also thought the one screenshot that you shared could describe she feels about the whole relationship she has with her husband! It really sets the tone for the rest of this film!)
My reply:
Hi Wyatt,
I think you're right. I think the images are the future projection of what the play will be like. I also think that because Madame Beudet is well read (unlike her husband), she knows that it's a story of an unpleasant tragedy - mainly for the female character. I think it was an intentional choice.
My response to a student essay:
Hi Brian,
I was also confused about that puppet show although I thought it was artistically clever. I thought perhaps it was Punch and Judy and the marriage would continue being a battle and a theater.
I did some research on a website frenchfilms.org. They interpret it as:
"At the end of the film, once the drama has resolved itself, a puppet show is projected onto a wall as a glib parody of a happy marriage, and we realise that this is how Madame Beudet sees herself - a pathetic guignol forever condemned to enact a ritual of simulated contentment in a theatre for children. "
I looked up the word guignol and it is defined as hand puppet.
Thanks for reminding me of this scene.
Test
Your Answers:
What film featured in the Module showcases French modern artist Fernand Léger's design of a laboratory of a scientist-hero?
L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier, 1924)
Please describe what is happening in this scene from The Smiling Madame Beudet? Who is this figure with the tennis racket?
Madame Beudet pictures the tennis player from her magazine coming to life and beating up her husband
What 1925 book written by Léon Moussinac summed up the Impressionism's stylistic traits and the theoretical views of its filmmakers?
Moussinac’s account stressed
a)expressive techniques like
b)slow motion and
c)superimpositions,
and it singled out the Impressionist group as the most interesting French filmmakers
What term did the French Impressionists use to indicate something more than being “photogenic?” For them, this term described the basis of cinema.
Photogénie
Please describe what has just happened in this final scene from The Smiling Madame Beudet.
Mr. Beudet thinks his wife was trying to kill herself not him and he gets emotional and gives her a hug. What would I do without you?
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