Gabriel Wolfe
Germaine Dulac experienced the typical mundane life of French housewives: sitting around, reading, looking presentable, and overall being an accessory or trophy for the husband. When Dulac could no longer deal with her position, she freed herself by entering the film industry. She states that her reasoning for joining cinema was to break “the monotony of a purely social life.” This quote becomes the entire theme and setting of The Smiling Madame Beudet.
In the beginning of the film, Dulac establishes Madame Beudet as completely bored with her current situation. The only activity she does enjoy is playing the piano, where she can be free to express herself through the music, and temporarily escape her usual magazine reading and aimless wandering about the house. Mail-time is the only other break that upper class women receive in the “inexorable monotony of time,” as Madame Beudet eagerly snatches the letters as if she will receive something that will save her from her unsatisfactory life.
Dulac also mentions her dissatisfaction with French cinema at the time. How the French focus on staging beauty in front of the screen while she firmly believes that cinema should focus on the brutal and vulgar of everyday life. In Beudet this vulgarity appears through Monsieur Beudet, whose grotesque face and laugh portray him more as a crazed lunatic who entraps Beudet and locks the piano away from her, rather than a loving husband of the upper class.
Keyzer, Princess. “Society Woman a Movie Director: Mme. Dulac, Famous French Cinema Producer, Acknowledges Her Debt to Americans, Whose Realistic Methods, She Says, Are Changing Dramatic Arts.” The Atlanta Constitution 6 June 1920: 14K. Print.