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Madame Bovary at the Movies FAUX TITRE 325 Etudes de langue et littérature françaises publiées sous la direction de Keith Busby, M.J. Freeman, Sjef Houppermans et Paul Pelckmans Madame Bovary at the Movies Adaptation, Ideology, Context Mary Donaldson-Evans AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2009 Cover design: Andrew Donaldson-Evans The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence’. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents - Prescriptions pour la permanence’. ISBN: 978-90-420-2504-2 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009 Printed in The Netherlands For Lance, Catherine, and Andrew Contents Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 13 1 The Theory and Practice of Adaptation 23 2 Jean Renoir (1934): Framing Emma 41 3 Vincente Minnelli (1949): Hollywood Rediscovers Emma 69 4 Claude Chabrol (1991): Keeping the Faith 101 5 Tim Fywell (2000): Sex in the Living Room 137 6 Adaptation and its Avatars 167 Conclusion 183 Appendix A: Synopsis of Novel 187 Appendix B: Filmography 193 Appendix C: Glossary of Film Terms 197 Bibliography 203 Index 213 Acknowledgements This has been a long-haul project, and if the debts I’ve incurred to the people who have helped me along the way had been monetary, the bank would have repossessed my house by now. Let me begin by thanking Laurence M. Porter. In the last decade of my career, I would not have had the pluck to embark upon a book-length study in a field doubly removed from my own (twentieth-century cinema as opposed to nineteenth-century literature) had Larry not intervened three times to nudge me along. The first intervention came as an invitation to contribute an essay to the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1995). My essay, “Teaching Madame Bovary through Film,” brought two further invitations, the first, to write entries on Renoir, Minnelli and Chabrol for The Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia (2001); and the second, to speak on film adaptations at the 2001 NCFS colloquium. All of these assignments propelled me along on the path towards this book. I had reached the point of no return. I also “outed” Larry as an anonymous reader of the manuscript, a task he accomplished with truly impressive thoroughness. I am most grateful to him. Suggestions made by another consultant reader, whose cloak of anonymity I have been unable to remove, have also been most helpful. Two other close friends read the entire manuscript in an earlier version. Graham Falconer, whose acumen as a critic of the nineteenth- century French novel is of the highest order, didn’t wait to be asked. His keen insights and gentle mentoring have helped me to improve my manuscript. Gerald Krell, a film director accustomed to crying “Cut!” on the set, approached my manuscript with the same concern for fluidity that he exhibits in making his remarkable documentaries. Although I could not bring myself to excise many of the passages he would have left on the cutting room floor, I did take most of his 10 Madame Bovary at the Movies suggestions for less painful changes, and if my book is more sensitive to the director’s viewpoint, it is largely because of him. At the University of Delaware, my research has been supported by an Elias Ahuja Professorship since 2002, an honor for which I was nominated by my chair, Richard Zipser. Thanks also to Professor Zipser, I have had the incalculable advantage of a steady supply of research assistants. Julia Brunner, Kate Copeland, Heike Gerhold, Loïc Marie-Magdelene, Fatima Mhinat, Kate Stark, and Thomas Chapman Wing have all been part of the production team for this book. In my courses, students have played supporting roles by asking provocative questions, thereby encouraging me to examine my own assumptions about adaptation. No scholarly work can be accomplished without access to a good library and a helpful staff. I have been fortunate indeed to enjoy such facilities at the Morris Library of the University of Delaware, where a faculty study has been made available to me. Closer to my home, I have for several years found refuge from the summer heat in the air-conditioned comfort of the John D. Vairo Library at the Brandywine Campus of Penn State University. I am grateful to the staff for their hospitality. During the time that this project has been under construction, I have been given many opportunities to give tours of the work-in- progress. Colleagues at conferences as well as scholars met on-line have helped me in myriad ways. Let me thank Anne-Marie Baron, Ross Chambers, Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, Kate Griffiths, Tomoko Hashimoto, Delphine Jayot, Martine Mesureur-Ceyrat, Judith Moortgat, Marshall Olds, Allan Pasco, Gerald Prince, Maurice Samuels, and Lawrence Schehr. Barbara Cooper deserves a sentence of her own, for she has pointed out many relevant articles to me through the years and has been a reliable source of friendly encouragement. To those colleagues who have invited me to speak on the Bovary films, I am also deeply beholden: Sonya Stephens, Tim Unwin and Robert Lethbridge (Leeds, UK, 2003); Jacques Neefs (Cerisy, 2006); Anne Herschberg-Pierrot (Paris, 2008). At these venues, I would have been seriously handicapped without the film clips that Tom McCone and Rae Stabosz of UD’s Foreign Language Media Center patiently helped me string together. Additionally, the illustrations that enhance this volume would not be there without the technological expertise of Tom McCone. Acknowledgements 11 Several of my colleagues at the University of Delaware have taken more than a casual interest in this book. Peter Feng became an indispensable source of information in the early stages of this project when he allowed me to audit two of his film courses. More recently, he read the Renoir chapter and offered pertinent suggestions. His ready answers to my technical questions have been most appreciated. To my good friend Gary Ferguson, who has been especially encouraging and helpful, I owe my awareness of Beyond the Forest. To him also goes the credit for coming up with the title that I have finally chosen for this study. Bruno Thibault has kindly shared the fruit of his own research on French film with me. Bonnie Robb’s recently published book on Félicité de Genlis served as a model for details of format when the MLA Handbook was silent. Monika Shafi, finally, with whom I have had a steady dialogue through the years about things both professional and personal, has been wonderfully steadfast in her support of this and all of my endeavors. I am indebted to Laure Marchaut for projecting the 35 mm. Renoir adaptation at the Cinémathèque archives; to Joan Dejean who graciously tried to locate the scenario of this same adaptation at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; to my neighbor Jacki Bishop, cat-sitter extraordinaire, who upon receiving a panicked call from Paris, dug through my files for information needed for a film paper I was about to read; to my son, Andrew, who designed the cover for this book; to my daughter, Catherine, who viewed Maya Memsaab and gave me the benefit of her insights; to Keith Busby, of the Faux Titre editorial board, who served as my liaison with Rodopi, generously presenting my manuscript to the other editors; to Amy Ralston, who meticulously prepared the camera-ready copy and the index for this book; to Christa Stevens of Rodopi who responded quickly to every query; to Bob Mitchell, who has played a vital role in my career and whose optimism feeds my own; to Margaret Kinetz and Susan Johnson, whose life-long friendship and concern for my welfare make them major players in any project I undertake. But it is above all to my husband Lance that this book owes its existence. Leaving aside the extra time I have had for my work thanks to the domestic tasks he has so cheerfully shared, he has been part of this project in so many ways that no written acknowledgement can give the measure of his role. My unofficial research assistant, he has on countless occasions returned home from the Van Pelt library bent 12 Madame Bovary at the Movies under the weight of books on film, has good-naturedly sat through viewings of every one of the Bovary adaptations, has read and re-read every page of this manuscript, listened to endless recitals of every idea. After re-playing a single scene from the Renoir adaptation dozens of times, he was the one, finally, who deciphered a snippet of dialogue that even had the subtitle writers stumped. It is to Lance and to our wonderful adult children that I dedicate this book. Note on the translations: Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the French are my own. Page references to Madame Bovary, given parenthetically in the text, are to the 1999 Livre de Poche edition listed in the bibliography. I have also listed the most authoritative and readily available translations in the hope that this information will be helpful to the non-French-speaking reader. Introduction The year 2007 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication, by the Parisian publishing house Charpentier, of the first edition of Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary. To argue that this novel has become a cultural icon is to belabor the obvious. A search of the on-line bibliography of the Modern Language Association conducted in the summer of 2008 revealed 590 subject entries for the novel since 1933 (555 since 1980 alone).

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