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Emma (Jones) wants a more exciting life and husband (Heflin)

MADAME BOVARY (1949). Director: Vincente Minelli.

"A man can change his life if he wants to ..."

Published in France in 1857, Gustave Flaubert's brilliant novel "Madame Bovary" was  accused of being an "outrage against public morals" and the author put on trial (and acquitted). This film version of the book begins with James Mason as Flaubert in the courtroom, explaining his creation, and then proceeding to [unnecessarily] narrate the early sequences of the movie. Farm girl Emma (Jennifer Jones) meets and falls in love -- or so she thinks -- with a simple, unambitious country doctor named Bovary (Van Heflin). But her day to day life is tedious and lacks color, and she realizes she is living with the wrong man, kind but dull. Her need for passion and excitement is even more energized when the couple are invited to a ball at the home of the Marquis D'Andervilliers (Paul Cavanagh) and she sees how wealthy people live and realizes how many men find her attractive. Guilt-wracked and initially resistant, she is drawn into affairs with Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan), who shatters her, and later a young lawyer named Leon (Christopher Kent, who later became the director, Alf Kjellin). Meanwhile her taste for the finer things in life means that her debts are adding up alarmingly, but it may be her husband who has to pay the piper. Emma isn't evil, but her dissatisfaction with her life with Bovary makes her susceptible to, shall we say, outside stimuli. Madame Bovary is pretty faithful to the novel, despite a couple of changes. In the book Dr. Bovary is pressured to operate on the clubfooted Hippolyte (Harry Morgan, herein known as Henry) with almost tragic results, while in the film he wisely realizes that he hasn't the skill of a surgeon, making him somewhat more sympathetic. The more licentious scenes of the novel, such as Emma and Leon driving all around town in a carriage obviously having sex in the back behind lowered blinds, have been jettisoned. Although Madame Bovary could have been better cast -- Heflin never comes off as that dull or unattractive and Jones isn't the perfect Emma, although Jourdan is fine -- the actors are still quite good, including those of the large supporting cast, which includes George Zucco as Leon's boss; Gladys Cooper as his mother; Ellen Corby as the maid, Felicite; Mason as Flaubert; and especially Frank Allenby as the slimy salesman, Lhereux. The film is well directed by Minelli and has a nice score by Miklos Rozsa. Kjellin/Kent later appeared in Ice Station Zebra and directed the telefilm Deadly Dream.

Verdict: Certainly not the masterpiece that the novel is, but on it's own terms vivid and entertaining, with Jones in very good form. ***.

A striking shot from "Happiest Millionaire"

 THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (1967). Director: Norman Tokar.

Walt Disney decided to try and get another blockbuster musical like The Sound of Music or its own Mary Poppins by adapting a play about the real-life Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, Sr. of Philadelphia. Frankly, Biddle seems an unlikely subject for a light-hearted musical, as he sounds like a rather grim, conservative soul -- despite his eccentricities, which sound more like childish curmudgeonliness -- who started an athletic-religious movement and probably never had to work a day in his life. As embodied by the ever-likable Fred MacMurray, Biddle is made more palatable in this screen treatment, which could have used a little more of a story. The chief plot has to do with the 1916 courtship and ensuing marriage of Biddle's daughter Cordy (Lesley Ann Warren) and Angier (John Davidson) of a prominent New York family. Biddle has two sons but they seem to disappear early in the picture, and even the maid, played very well by Hemione Baddeley, takes a hike after the intermission [the film is nearly three hours long!]. On the other hand, Tommy Steele's winning personality as the butler is on display throughout the film. Greer Garson is cast as Biddle's wife, and while she adds a bit of class to the film, she doesn't really seem to be in the same movie -- you just can't see her as thinking anything but that Biddle is utterly declasse. Garson doesn't make any attempt to be funny, which may have been wise of her. Speaking of class, Gladys Cooper as Aunt Mary and Geraldine Page as Angier's mother nearly steal the picture, especially in the parlor scene when they have a sophisticated verbal cat-fight. An unexpected cast member is Joan Marshall [who starred in Homicidal as Jean Arless] playing a maid who is terrified of Biddle's collection of pet alligators. [More than once we see Tommy Steele pulling one of the larger gators by the tail.] The songs by the Sherman Brothers are vaguely pleasant at times, but not very memorable.This was the first film for both Warren and Davidson, both of whom are excellent. The Disney studio later teamed them in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. MacMurray is fine.NOTE: The restored, expanded DVD of this movie actually has a kind of vague double-image on the picture and is certainly not as crisp and clear as it should be.

Verdict: The movie is not terrible, it's just too long and aimless and needs a stronger story. **1/2.