The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

James Mason portrays author Gustave Flaubert on trial for his writing of Madame Bovary, on the charge of morality.Mason, in court, goes on to narrate the story of a woman, well played by Jennifer Jones, who grows up wanting more of life. Frustrated as she is, she seeks status while marrying Van Heflin, the country doctor. Her ability to succumb to ill-fated romances as well as running up debts leads to her inevitable downfall.As one of her lovers, Boulanger, Louis Jourdan forsakes his French accent. As the mother of one of her suitors, a failed clerk to an attorney, Gladys Cooper was able to reunite with Jones six years later after her memorable turn as the mean nun who make life so miserable for Jones in "The Song of Bernadette."We see beyond Mme. Bovary's imperfections to an imperfect world led by those who would destroy others for debts incurred.

I'm a big fan of Vincent Minnelli's films and had saved this one for a rainy day and the pleasure seeing another take on a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I lived in France for many years and could imagine a Norman village within striking distance of Rouen. The village looks like something from Disneyland and the "French" characters as French as fries at McDonald's. I would have to admit that Jennifer Jones is gorgeous to look at but even her beauty can't rescue this Hollywoodized attempt at Kulcha". The scene at the dance was entirely too long and drawn out and the mirrors throughout the film were forced and contrived. Of course, the criticism of Emma's behavior were necessary to please the censors but the film turns into a diatribe against her morals that reaches American Puritanical hysteria. Those of us who read the book in its original language can vouch for the fact the Mme Bovary's village was claustrophobic and the people could be crude - not as crude as in the film where their crudity reached the absurd. We wouldn't think for a moment about changing Thomas Hardy's novels to fit the code, but both he and Flaubert showed their countries as they really were, without the embellishment of prettifying or laundering. What a disappointment,helas...Curtis Stotlar

A treatment that was actually faithful to the novel--a cynical look at social climbing in the petit bourgeois French--wouldn't make Jennifer Jones look lovely and sympathetic, and Heaven knows, the beautiful young star must have a halo. So Emma is portrayed as a hopeless romantic, understandably in love with pretty things, who tries to love her husband, actually wants a child (the novel's heroine was indifferent to children), and generally tries her best to be good, but is betrayed by her own passions. She is redeemed as she dies (beautifully, of course). Van Heflin is a much more articulate and intelligent Charles than the clunking doofus Flaubert created, and Rodolphe was thick-skinned and callous in a way that Hollywood would never permit Louis Jourdan to be. So this version would have satisfied as a forties chick flick, all costumes and heaving bosoms, but it really bears very little relation, except for a few script lines, to the harsh and brilliant novel. Such a cynical view of a woman in movies was really not possible at the time. The world is still waiting for the real cinematic Emma Bovary.

This was something of a personal film for director Vincente Minnelli, one of my favorite directors from the 40s/50s Hollywood scene. But I can't say it's a personal favorite of mine, basically because it was too much undermined by Hollywood sensibilities. Still, it is an interesting link in the chain of Minnelli's films and reveals a lot about him as an artist. It bears interesting comparison with some of his other films, which provides my main interest in the film as opposed to what it is in and of itself.This version of "Bovary" starts with a rather intrusive framing device wherein the author Flaubert (played by Englishman James Mason) takes the stand in defense of his novel's decency. What he ultimately provides by way of defense is rather insulting to one's intelligence -- simply the idea that art depicts "realism" of some kind and that therefore the morality of the art itself cannot be drawn into question. All of this just might have some kind of impact, if it weren't for the fact that the film itself avoids a lot of the nastier aspects of Flaubert's work and replaces them with a relatively standard misogynistic "fallen woman" tale, whitewashing the character of Charles Bovary (Van Heflin) and cleaning up the ending. So while we have James Mason eloquently defending artistic freedom, we have at the same time a compromised film that hypocritically censors Flaubert's work in order to make it more palatable to Christian sensibilities.However, in someone other than Minnnelli's hands this script could have turned into full-on misogyny. Instead he and Jennifer Jones (in the title role) created a reasonably nuanced portrait of the woman. And what really puts it over is Minnelli's unparalleled sense of how to use the environments to enhance the characterization, from Emma's little farm room with tacked-up depictions of noble knights and ladies, to the bric-a-brac "luxury" apartment she constructs for her adult life. One of the things about Minnelli which is fascinating, and has been studied by various authors, is the way that Minnelli uses decor not just as a way of describing his characters but also as a way of actually conditioning them. Not only do the settings show the influence of the characters, and thus describe them, but they also have a direct impact on the characters. Minnelli has great sympathy with Emma Bovary's desire for escape and transcendence through fantasy, and he makes us feel it too with the great technique in the ballroom dance sequence. In all cases, Madame Bovary's surroundings dictate her behavior while she consciously believes that by purchasing all kinds of "luxury" items to surround herself with, she will thereby be able to control her own destiny through interior design.Minnelli's film is about a woman who is afraid of the "ordinary", for whom childish romantic notions of escape become a suffocating influence on her entire life. The Charles Bovary character is played as a very down-to-earth type perhaps in order to elicit the audience's pathos but also to provide a contrast to Emma. Minnelli is conscious of the fact that film itself is often guilty of feeding these very same notions of "escape" and fantasy, and he uses this film as a way of subverting that process.