With Vincente Minnelli directing and Louis Jourdan on the cast list you could almost be forgiven for expecting a Flaubert musical, and indeed the wonderfully well-organised ball sequence is one of the highlights of a film that, unlike many, has improved with age. There had been two earlier versions (Renoir's in 1934 and a Hollywood 1932 attempt memorably entitled Unholy Love); this one framed the novel within the author's trial on a charge of corrupting morals by writing his book. Jennifer Jones makes a sedate Madame, but James Mason is noble as Flaubert himself. It has rather more bite than the recent Claude Chabrol version with Isabelle Huppert, but the Renoir version is still the best of all.


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes