Jean Renoir Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James Shelley Hamilton

Critical Essay by James Shelley Hamilton

Changing a novel into a motion picture—really changing it from the medium of words into the medium of the camera—is a thorough-going process that is not often attempted except in the case of insignificant stories that do not matter to anyone…. A film has to be "like the book" in all the respects that made the book popular, or it's a disappointment to the large audience for whom it was made….

Madame Bovary is successful [because it so thoroughly satisfies so many people who were fond of the book]. The film as shown here suffers somewhat from attempts to bring it down to the length considered acceptable to American audiences….

Far more important is the fact that the film is Flaubert's novel, given beautiful and vivid form for the eye to see. This visual form is completely French, in the original, by which I do not mean that the dialogue...
(read more)