David Lean's RYAN'S DAUGHTER is sublime and a masterpiece, but it is the film Emma would have made rather than Flaubert. Normally I avoid BBC costume dramas as the antithesis of everything I hold dear in terms of literature and film. Because most lassic novels are so long, they are stripped to their bare bones, like the summaries in York's notes, as if it is the plot that is important, and not the way it is told.
Further, this skeleton is weighed down by a crazed fetishisation of period detail in a quest for authenticity. As has been pointed out, these bourgeois entertainments, supposedly an antidote to 'generic' Hollywood fare, are actually more generic, in that an undisclosed standard of respectability must be continually adhered to.
Perversely, the most outstanding and inventive films of the year are adoptations of classic novels, Raul Ruiz' LE TEMPS RETROUVE, and Patricia Rozema's MANSFIELD PARK, two works which take thrilling liberties with their sources, which are unashamedly cinematic, daring to be disrespectful when needs be, which emerge from the closed world of the text to become comments on the artistic creation of that text itself, as well as the socio-political pressures that helped that creation. That is not to say they stint on period pleasures - costumes, decor etc - but these are part of the films' meaning and critique, not a stagnant end in themselves.
I only watched MADAME BOVARY because its star is MANSFIELD's beautiful Frances O'Conner, an actress in the process of becoming very great. Robbed of the freedom given to her by Rozema, her stifled sprightliness is appropriate to this story of a bored fantasist stuck in dreary, suffocatingly conventional provincial France (oh, for MOUCHETTE!). In fact, the brooding and muted production is probably appropriate too, as Emma struggles to free herself not only from social mediocrity, but filmic as well.
Too often the stage is set for a grand, moving, emotionally devastating scene - the waltz with the Vicomte (compare this with the heavenly ball in MANSFIELD); the midnight meetings with Rodolphe; the trip to the Opera etc - only to be hobbled by conventionality and a lack of daring. This is MADAME BOVARY made by Charles.
This is not to say that the film is not without merit. The script is comparitively crisp, and there is a lovely vein of humour you'd be hard pushed to find even in Flaubert - my favourite is when an initial Emma daydream is followed by a farcical falling of her father from a tree.
The visual dankness is true enough, and allows for the odd visual epiphany, such as Emma's lilac dress. There is rarely much room for acting in these things, but Hugh Bonneville is a magnificent Charles, so decent, so nice, yet so intolerable, while Eileen Atkins is perfect as the mother-in-law from hell.
What seems most odd is the religious underpinning given to Emma's ecstasies. Maybe, like Bresson, Flaubert's relentless depiction of spiritualless banality is underpinned by imminent transcendence, but if it is, I missed it. This doesn't matter, because it allows for some intriguing effects - the opening ceremony that could be either wedding, christening or funeral; the delirious reading from the Song of Solomon; the burning cross in Leon's carriage as he and Emma are about to make love. In the end, the fumbling attempts at subjective sympathy with Emma culminate in her memories living on after her death, 'realistically' impossible, giving this ending a real force. The barrel-organ leitmotifs are pretty neat too.
Further, this skeleton is weighed down by a crazed fetishisation of period detail in a quest for authenticity. As has been pointed out, these bourgeois entertainments, supposedly an antidote to 'generic' Hollywood fare, are actually more generic, in that an undisclosed standard of respectability must be continually adhered to.
Perversely, the most outstanding and inventive films of the year are adoptations of classic novels, Raul Ruiz' LE TEMPS RETROUVE, and Patricia Rozema's MANSFIELD PARK, two works which take thrilling liberties with their sources, which are unashamedly cinematic, daring to be disrespectful when needs be, which emerge from the closed world of the text to become comments on the artistic creation of that text itself, as well as the socio-political pressures that helped that creation. That is not to say they stint on period pleasures - costumes, decor etc - but these are part of the films' meaning and critique, not a stagnant end in themselves.
I only watched MADAME BOVARY because its star is MANSFIELD's beautiful Frances O'Conner, an actress in the process of becoming very great. Robbed of the freedom given to her by Rozema, her stifled sprightliness is appropriate to this story of a bored fantasist stuck in dreary, suffocatingly conventional provincial France (oh, for MOUCHETTE!). In fact, the brooding and muted production is probably appropriate too, as Emma struggles to free herself not only from social mediocrity, but filmic as well.
Too often the stage is set for a grand, moving, emotionally devastating scene - the waltz with the Vicomte (compare this with the heavenly ball in MANSFIELD); the midnight meetings with Rodolphe; the trip to the Opera etc - only to be hobbled by conventionality and a lack of daring. This is MADAME BOVARY made by Charles.
This is not to say that the film is not without merit. The script is comparitively crisp, and there is a lovely vein of humour you'd be hard pushed to find even in Flaubert - my favourite is when an initial Emma daydream is followed by a farcical falling of her father from a tree.
The visual dankness is true enough, and allows for the odd visual epiphany, such as Emma's lilac dress. There is rarely much room for acting in these things, but Hugh Bonneville is a magnificent Charles, so decent, so nice, yet so intolerable, while Eileen Atkins is perfect as the mother-in-law from hell.
What seems most odd is the religious underpinning given to Emma's ecstasies. Maybe, like Bresson, Flaubert's relentless depiction of spiritualless banality is underpinned by imminent transcendence, but if it is, I missed it. This doesn't matter, because it allows for some intriguing effects - the opening ceremony that could be either wedding, christening or funeral; the delirious reading from the Song of Solomon; the burning cross in Leon's carriage as he and Emma are about to make love. In the end, the fumbling attempts at subjective sympathy with Emma culminate in her memories living on after her death, 'realistically' impossible, giving this ending a real force. The barrel-organ leitmotifs are pretty neat too.