The first daydream featured was of a shimmering, sunlit pond with long grasses and cattails. It occurs when Madame Beudet is at her piano, playing Debussy’s third movement piece, “Jardins Sous La Pluie” (Gardens in the Rain) from Estampes.
This impressionist piece relates to her daydream. The piece itself describes rain showers, wind blowing, and violent rainstorms in a garden (DuBose). The theme of the movement mirrors her aggressive husband repressing her more fragile nature. She is repressed of a calm, peaceful life she yearns for, and her reverie fulfills her wishes of escape.
Her repression is portrayed through the daydream. She is dreaming of a scene that is so simple in nature and in theory. Rather than being able to go outside, she is trapped inside the apartment. Her reality with her husband does not allow choices she would want to make, but in her daydream, she can escape. Dulac says that cinematic action allows this escape: “The action of cinema is elsewhere, in the domain of the unexpressive, the inexpressible, of the fantastic … the fantastic of the banal and the everyday. That which we each carry within ourselves” (Musser 121). The action, in this case, is her playing the piano, triggering the interior thoughts. In this daydream, viewers “…constantly experience her soul, her passions through her interiority” (Musser 122). This point sums up how viewers truly get to know Madame Beudet’s desire for escape through her demonstration of passionate piano playing. Her interiority is outwardly shown to the viewers through Dulac’s portrayal of Madame Beudet’s daydream.
Brooke Halsted
Source Used:
DuBose, Joseph. “Claude DeBussy.” ClassicalConnect.com. Classical Connect, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.
Musser, Charles. “The Clash between Theater and Film.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 5.2 (2007): 111-34. Web.