A Film Canon

 

 

The prototypical feminist film, The Smiling Madame Beudet grants its protagonist a level of subjectivity unmatched by anything that I have seen to date. This is largely due to Dulac's subversion of melodramatic space and, more specifically, the physical parameters of the bourgeois household. Not only are these conveyed in restrictive, rather than protective, terms, but their whole separation of inside and outside is called into question by Beudet's transportative daydreams and fantasies, which replace interior with interiority, and reduce the house to a free-floating living room, its other components elided or (as is the case with the dining room) dramatically abstracted; that is, a mere ingredient of, rather than anchor for, the sophisticated montage sequences. The result is that Beudet herself is resolutely abstracted from any domestic functionality, while the profundity of her apathetic distance explicates the extent to which female subjectivity is required to conform to that role, such that there is ultimately no distinction between her apparent inability to engage in housework and her unwillingness to make any real gesture of affection towards her husband, who becomes more domesticated by comparison. This is all enhanced by Dulac's poetic use of visual innuendo to convey Beudet's sexual desires, most beautifully by juxtaposing her weighty wedding ring with her sensual, liberating explorations of her piano.