The final daydream, called “Obsession,” brings to the surface the roiling depths of the hatred which Madeline feels for her husband’s ways, and reveals what lengths she is willing go to cleanse herself of him. Dulac uses a great range of filmmaking techniques to make the character’s subjectivity felt and therefore understood by the viewer. Dulac’s ability to make the play “open inward” (1.) is its defining quality, the one for which it is most often praised. “Obsession,” is the point at which the character’s descent into hatred becomes a trip down the rabbit hole which leads her somewhere she will regret.
My reading of this sequence is informed by Flitterman’s article “Dulac in Context,” in which he describes Dulac in terms of her relationship to the Impressionist mode of her time. Impressionists employed “a battery of experimental techniques” in order to render “the life of the mind…of the characters.” (2.) Dulac, an Impressionist, employs a number of techniques in the “battery” Flitterman describes.
The first manipulative device can be seen in the first shot of the daydream, where Monsieur Beudet is coming over the railing. This shot is done in dramatic slow motion, giving his movements a spiderlike quality, an effect heightened by the white lace curtains on either side of him as he climbs. The window is the only gateway to the light of day that the room offers, and the dark background associated with this subjective representation of him suggests that Madeline associates him with darkness:
In Musser’s article, “The Senses and Subjectivity,” he describes how Dulac engages all five of the senses throughout the movie, and how these engagements are keys to the “visceral impact” (3.) that the film achieves. One example of this is is Dulac’s use of the bell, which seems to momentarily wake Madeline from her trance. Dulac times the ring with a visual cue of a bell ringing. This creates a release in tension, almost as if Dulac is hitting the reset button, as Madeline rushes to the window.
But escape is not so simple. Just a moment after the window is closed, Dulac uses a superimposition of Monsier to create a “ghost” effect, in which Monsier appears next to her, laughing uproariously at her. Because of the faded quality of the superimposition, the audience understands that his relation to Madeline is psychological and non-material.
Madeline flees the aparition and cowers in a corner, and is immediately confronted by another superimposition of her husband, this time in a brief flash of furious scratching made even more frantic by the addition of a “sped-up” effect.
The two takes create a kind of symmetry in the rhythm of the dream, first through a slowed-down take of him moving the vase and then a take him vigorously demanding aid with his necktie. The symmetry created here is a pattern of going from “slow”-to-“fast”-to-“slow”-to-“fast” with Monsier’s movements in each take.
The climactic moment of the daydream is the close-up of Monsier. One of the techniques that Flitterman references as “Impressionistic” are “lens distortions” like the one that Dulac uses in these shots. The effect that they have is to create a sense of claustrophobia. Monsieur Beudet is inescapble and all-consuming in her mind. She is in utter resignation.
Epstein calls the close-up, “maximum visual acuity.” (4.) Never again in the film is there a point where a close-up is so grotesquely massive in proportion. Dulac’s intention is to force the audience to experience Monsier as only Madame can see him, and to place him in a context to make the resolution sensible. A difficult task, considering the conclusion calls for murder.
The resolutionary scene comes about when the daydream returns to the desk, where a superimposition of Monsieur appears as she turns toward the desk mock her with his empty gun, and then fades away. It is then that Madeline comes to her terrible conclusion: that she must load the gun, so that, next time, it will really send a bullet into her husband’s skull, thus ending her misery. What makes this sequence such an incredible achievement is that a large percentage of the audience would likely agree that he deserves to die for what he’s done. And it is due to the Impressionistic style which Dulac uses in this film.
1. Abel, “la souriante madame beudet and l’inondation”
2. Flitterman, “Dulac in Context,” (89)
3. Musser, “Senses and Subjectivity” (128)
4. Musser, “Senses and Subjectivity” (128)