Welcome to A Century in Cinema, the monthly column where I’ll be discussing films from a hundred years ago, the historical impact they had, and how they hold up today. Whether we’re covering timeless classics or obscure gems, follow along as we continue to explore…a century in cinema! WARNING: Hundred-Year-Old SPOILERS ahead!
The Smiling Madame Beudet, known by its original title La Souriante Madame Beudet, is interesting when compared to other films discussed in this column. It is a short film, clocking in at thirty-eight minutes, and doesn’t register on the list of the year’s highest grossing films. However, it still managed to find its way onto the list of 1001 films to see before you die, being only one of three films from 1923 along with Our Hospitality, a Buster Keaton comedy lauded for its cinematography and incorporating gags into a narrative structure, and La Roue, a French epic with then-revolutionary lighting and editing techniques. Madame Beudet is widely considered to be one of the earliest feminist films, written (though uncredited) and directed by Germaine Dulac, who had previously written for the radical feminist newspaper La Fronde before embarking on a career in film.
A Somber Slice of Espousal Life
The story is divided into two chapters and follows the titular character (Germaine Demoz), an unhappy woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Her husband (Alexandre Arquillière) is a boorish, crude man that Madame Beudet views with disdain, but he doesn’t notice as he slurps his soup or leers at her with a grin marred by terrible teeth. She spends her time playing the piano, which he’ll lock to punish her when he’s upset, or reading the paper and daydreaming about her husband being carried away by the tennis champion shown on the page. When he gets worked up, which is often, he will dramatically pull a revolver from his desk drawer and pretend to shoot himself. This has become routine to the point where his wife doesn’t even react anymore, but it somehow manages to get a laugh from his friends.
One day, he receives a message with some box-seat theater tickets where Faust will be performed. Excited, he and his friends prepare for the evening. Madame refuses to go, angering her husband, who then feigns suicide to no avail. After they leave, she’s left to her own thoughts of the miserable life she endures and reads about an ideal world of beds filled with soft perfumes, couches deep as graves, and flowers on the shelves. Her mind wanders, only to see images of her unkempt bed, a single petite chair, and a drab vase with few flowers that she and her husband go back and forth repositioning on the table. When the housekeeper asks to leave early to meet her fiancé, Madame has a vision of him showing the housekeeper the affection she herself longs for.
The next chapter begins with her having a vision of a man beckoning her through the window, but she’s haunted by thoughts of her angry husband jumping into the room and brandishing his gun. Inspired, she goes into his office and actually puts a bullet into the gun for the next time he wants to play his little prank. That night, the husband sleeps soundly, but she is tortured by the thought of what she’s done and what could happen. The next day, she tries to get downstairs and remove the bullet before it’s too late, but the office is never unoccupied. She seizes the first opportunity she can, but is unable to take it out in time. Later, her husband calls her down to ask her about the large number of household expenses. She tries to explain, but he gets upset and predictably draws his weapon. As he places it to his head, she screams, causing him to turn the gun toward her and fires. To his shock, the bullet flies past her, missing completely, and hits a vase behind her. He immediately runs to comfort her, thinking that she was attempting to kill herself rather than him. “How could I live without you?” he laments. The film ends with a title card that reads “In the peaceful streets, without horizon, under the low sky, together by habitude.”
Astoundedly Avant-Garde
The Smiling Madame Beudet is a remarkable film, both in terms of subject matter and technical ability. To depict a woman so unhappy in her marriage and show violence toward her husband in 1923 was no doubt shocking then, especially given the sympathetic light Madame Beudet is cast in. We’re even meant to root for her to escape her marriage and find happiness. To be so unabashedly feminist, even anti-men, and lambasting the idea of marriage and showing fealty to one’s husband in a time when women couldn’t even vote in France is incredible. Demoz gives a wonderful performance, and despite the film’s title her face almost eternally forms a sullen expression that’s timeless in depicting the extent of her misery and helplessness. Arquillière perfectly plays his unbearable role, welcoming our disdain in a way that Jack Gleeson would be all too familiar with.
Dulac’s work here is also important to note. She was known as an avante-garde filmmaker and her film La Coquille et le Clergyman, released one year before Un Chien Andalou, has been celebrated as being a pre-Surrealist filmmaker as well as one of the great Impressionist directors, though some don’t include her in that category. Her use of editing and cinematographic tricks to portray Madame Beudet’s visions is at times striking, such as the pendulum superimposed over the footage to heighten the tension as she’s panged with guilt overloading the gun or the puppet in the painting, calling back to the husband’s earlier conversation with his friend. The rapid cuts of the gunshot and the ensuing results delivers the desired emotions of shock and surprise to the viewer and the lighting, particularly in the scenes where Madame gazes into the mirror, makes each shot that much more memorable.
Conclusion:
There’s a reason this film is on the list, and after viewing it’s no surprise. This film is as important for feminist cinema as Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1920) was for Black directors. While it’s a short rather than a feature, this is a film that needs to be highlighted more, especially among film history students and fans of feminist films. I highly recommend pausing your current binge show and taking the length of the next episode to give this a watch. Madame may never smile, but I certainly did.
You can watch the film on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VA8NBhipvs
Watch The Smiling Madame Beudet
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