Madame Bovary (1949)

Plot Summary

Lovely Emma Bovary longs for romance, glamour, possessions. Wed to a country doctor, she instead gets routine, motherhood and penny-pinching. So when she catches the eye of a handsome aristocrat, Emma risks all to reach for what she thinks will be happiness. Jennifer Jones stars in this lush adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert novel that scandalized 19th-century France. The film's capstone is the stunning ballroom scene, contrasting Emma's social success with her husband's failure, culminating in his drunken arrival on the dance floor. In the famed sequence, director Vincente Minnelli skillfully combines dissolves, cross-cuts, pans, long takes - a library of techniques - into a seamless triumph of head-spinning gaiety, heart-breaking despair and moviemaking artistry.