Minnelli's "Madame Bovary" with Jennifer Jones, as TCM's Aug. 17 Star of the Day

This was originally planned for Lana Turner, until they realized there was no way in hell she could act it.

Never seen it but the title reminds me of the time Carla called Rebecca "Madame Ovary" on Cheers.

When I was in the third grade I saw this movie on Frances Farmer P:resents. Frances had good things to say about Jones, Heflin, and Minnelli.

The waltz scene is deliriously romantic. "The lady's going to faint!" *smashes windows*. It's pure Hollywood pablum, perhaps the way Emma Bovary herself would've imagined her life, whereas Chabrol's version is the ugly reality. Rosza's score is great. There's a bit where her parasitic salesman is marching to see her about the bill, the music there sounded ahead of it's time.

The movie is just okay, but the Waltz scene is spectacular.

The sequence at the ball is possibly the best thing Minnelli ever directed, it’s both the apex of Emma’s dreams and the beginning of her downfall.

I think Minnelli intensely identified with Emma Bovary. Though Flaubert reportedly said Emma was he, it goes triple for Vincente Minnelli. “Love in a Spanish villa, love in a Scottish castle . . .” because it was Hollywood that could bring all those fantasies alive.

The whole movie is excellent, a first class production in every department, and Walter Plunkett’s best costume job since “Gone With the Wind.” And it captures something of the weird tone of the novel. It was already an expensive project going in, and it lost money at the box office but it’s a pity it wasn’t in color. The sequence at the ball at least should have been.

KittyDyke, I remember that Madame Ovary line from Cheers, too!

Jennifer Jones was excellent in comedies like "Cluny Brown" and "Beat the Devil," but David Selznick always wanted to star her in costume dramas where she was always uncomfortable.