Madame Bovary

Brilliant melodrama is admittedly only a step above soapie, but Minnelli's outstanding direction (note the dizzying ballroom sequence), Jones' transformative leading performance (almost the anti-Scarlett O'Hara), and terrific support work from Heflin, Jourdan and fellow Tasmanian Allenby, do much to elevate the film to classic status. Framing device, with Mason as Flaubert narrating from a morals trial, is an odd but effective way to present a theatrical device in cinematic language.

Presumably the book works a lot better, or at least an unHaysCoded film adaptation would. I have a rather serious "so what" reaction to this story

Dull, emasculated version of a classic.

Worth it just for the ballroom sequence that culminates in Emma Bovary's dizzying waltz --such exquisite timing. Minnelli plays it relatively cool elsewhere though, and I'm left wondering what could've been had it all been on the level of that one scene

"Bad and the Beautiful explicity makes of filmmaking an artistic, passionaite, soul-crushing labor." http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2014/09/episode-29-vincente-minnelli-melodramas.html

Tremendously melodramatic, but still quite compelling.

There is a better adaptation of the novel trapped in here somewhere. It's a good movie because it gives a strong sense that Emma Bovary's predicament has many facets; that her reckless greedy romanticism - while a definite moral fault - is both spurned and excessively punished by a male chauvinist society. Yet the adaptation often veers into melodrama and moralism, thereby detrimenting Flaubert's anti-romantic ideas.

Unlike Jean Renoir for his adaptation of Madame Bovary (1934), Vincente Minnelli did pick a lady that looked like she could cause all that desire for his Madame Bovary (1949), though Jennifer Jones was probable little too sweet looking for that kind of destructive woman. That did result in being more sympathetic to her wrongdoing, which was a not as effective angle, but it is a good story if you give her the benefit of the doubt.

I detest Jennifer Jones, no matter how acclaimed she is, and this movie just all in all pissed me off.