Chabrol, by producing an overly-reverent, almost pageant-like homage to Flaubert, presents his audience with a film which is visually beautiful, yet strangely lifeless. .
In adapting Madame Bovary for the screen, both directors had to deal with what I term "the narrative problem"--how to create a coherent narrative structure in a cinematic version of a fictional work. A fictional narrative can reveal the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of the characters, and can move the reader smoothly from episode to episode through narrative and descriptive links. This presents a challenge for cinema, which is a visual medium. .
Both Minnelli and Chabrol are well ware of the narrative problem--how to keep the episodes flowing, how to link them, how to make transitions. But they arrive at very different solutions. .
Minnelli's solution to the narrative problem is brilliant. He uses Flaubert's trial of 1857, with its attempted suppression of Madame Bovary as an outrage to public morals, as a framing device for his film. The staged trial scene, with the young James Mason in the role of Flaubert, clearly tells the audience how to interpret Emma Bovary: "I have shown the vicious for the purpose of understanding it. .
Our world created Emma Bovary. There are thousands of Emma Bovarys." Throughout the film, the voice of Mason as Flaubert enters periodically to explain scenes and move the plot forward as well as comment on Emma's search for happiness. In perfect symmetry, the film ends with a return to the trial scene with Flaubert triumphant. Amid swelling music, a victory for thought and expression is celebrated.
Chabrol's solution to the narrative problem is much less satisfying. An unidentified narrative voice intrudes throughout the film to move the plot forward. It seems awkward and is not as clever as the narrative device employed by Minnelli. Another problem which both directors had to face was how to establish the character of Emma Bovary in a visual medium.