‘Madame Bovary’ at the Movies: Adaptation, Ideology, Context (review)

Given Mary Donaldon-Evans’s reputation as a fine critic of the works of Maupassant and Flaubert in the medical and other ideological contexts of nineteenth-century France, one might expect her approach to film adaptations of Madame Bovary to take the literary text as final arbiter in her assessments of the successes or otherwise of the seventh art. From the outset, however, she rejects the ‘fidelity’ approach to adaptations of fiction for film, so as to concentrate on the merits of the various film adaptations for themselves. Her introduction therefore examines theories and practices of film adaptation, especially to guide newcomers, to prepare the chronological investigation of the main remakes of Madame Bovary in chapters devoted to Jean Renoir (1934), Vincente Minnelli (1949), Claude Chabrol (1991) and Tim Fywell (2000) respectively, each in the ideological contexts of their times. Attention to particular constraints, such as film censorship, budget, pre-determined choices of principal stars, non-availability of colour film, or, more positively the particular penchants of the director in question, allows the close reading of each film version to stand or fall by a number of film studies parameters. The contents and ideological frame of the original text is not lost, however, but used to evaluate what is innovative in each of the film versions. A final chapter can then address the questions and problems for film or television adaptation more widely. In what ways do later directors and script writers borrow, rework and recall devices from previous adaptations? How widely should the net be cast when considering films which seem to rely on some aspect of the literary text for inspiration, but not adapt it per se? Literary criticism and its concern with intertextuality or, rather, intermediality thus emerge as the overarching subject of this study. While film and nineteenth-century French specialists may wish that more space had been devoted to the some dozen adaptations which are not discussed in any detail, students and teachers of Madame Bovary could not want for a more accessible, lucid, wide-ranging and probing study of the reception of Flaubert’s novel.