The Smiling Madame Beudet
A simple plot frames this outstanding feminist work: Mme Beudet is married to a bombastic boor and suffocated by convention, withdraws into the realms of her own imagination. One night she refuses to go to the opera with him and, left behind, dreams up the near-perfect murder. Her plan misfires (though he's too stupid to notice) and Mme Beudet is left as she began, an unsmiling chattel. A pessimistic situation, but the optimism in ‘The Smiling Madame Beudet’ comes in every scene with Dulac's inspired visual comments-from the fantasy lover who steps out of a magazine, to the ironic closing comment on an apparently happy couple: “theatre”.
Of all the silent films I've ever seen this rates top for delight. Fantasy and invention course through its veins… this is enchanted cinema.
– Helen MacKintosh, City Limits
Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.
