Loading
French Avant-GardeFilm 4 of 18
The Smiling Madame Beudet
La Souriante Madame Beudet
- Year
- Country
- Sound
- Director
Your rating
Germaine Dulac, 1923, from the play by Denys Amiel and André Obey. In a dull provincial house Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) smiles because that is required; her husband thinks an empty revolver is a funny threat. She imagines him gone, then almost makes it true when he loads the gun and she does not know. About half an hour. Dulac uses superimposition for the life the wife is not allowed. CNC and the Cinémathèque treat it as a key surviving film by a woman director of the 1920s.
In two programmes
Half an hour, a provincial house, and a woman who smiles because that is required. Dulac uses slow motion and superimposition for the life she is not allowed. The empty revolver is the plot. The camera thinking for her is the film.
Women Pioneers of Silent Cinema
Germaine Dulac directed this from the Denys Amiel and André Obey play and used superimposition for the life a provincial wife is not allowed, which is a formal choice made in the chair, not in the drawing room. About half an hour of impressionist cinema. CNC and the Cinémathèque Française hold the key surviving materials and treat the film as central to what a woman director cut in the 1920s. Madame Beudet smiles because the house requires it; Dulac is the one who decides how that smile is photographed, and when the empty revolver stops being a joke.
Cast & crew
Further reading
Also streaming
Loading films
