INA's eye: Madame Bovary, Flaubert's classic can be a hit on TV

The adaptation, in 2021, of

for television is not a first.

Gustave Flaubert's novel is one of the classics in the history of the small screen.

But it had never been denatured as it could have been last Monday on France 2.

One evening in 1953, in an audiovisual landscape where there were less than 60,000 jobs in France, the only black and white channel offered a drama by Claude Barma.

At 30, the future director of

signs his first major production, based on a text by Jacques Chabannes.

The latter, presenter of

, is also a writer.

He mixed with the original story extracts from an adaptation for the theater by Gaston Baty, traveling companion of Louis Jouvet and Charles Dullin.

Luce Feyrer - Madame Chabannes in the city and Jacques Morel are the headliners.

Read alsoDiscover here the version of

by Claude Barma.

Ten years later, it was Jean Renoir's turn to tackle a work of which he had already shot, in 1933, a version for the nascent talking cinema.

Valentine Tessier, to whom he had entrusted the role of Madame Bovary for the big screen, enters again in the dress of this woman whom adulterous loves will lead to ruin and death.

"

", declares Renoir during an interview in the natural setting he has voluntarily chosen: 19th century houses with thatched roofs, in a street in Sèvres.

To read also Michel De Jaeghere: "Madame Bovary, c'est nous"

There is no success, unlike the 1973 TV movie, which Madelen invites you to discover, or rediscover. Critics and audiences alike salute the adaptation and staging of Pierre Cardinal, one of the masters of television drama. Throughout a career that lasted more than 30 years, he managed to achieve what some considered impossible: to transpose to the image of the texts of Voltaire, Diderot, Stendhal and some other great classical authors. Some time before his disappearance, he explained how much the work around

had been difficult.

Before tackling it, he wondered at length: how to touch the hearts of viewers with a story that, without Flaubert's style, seems extremely flat, with mediocre characters whose lives are a permanent bore.

Read alsoDiscover here the adaptation of

by Pierre Cardinal

Thus, unlike his predecessors, he did not hesitate to betray the original work by introducing, on several occasions, a series of flashbacks to evoke the relationship between Emma and Charles Bovary. In Gerberoy, on the border between Normandy and Ile-de-France, in the setting of a typical village with houses from the 17th and 18th centuries, in wood, cob, bricks and flint, he led for six weeks , Nicole Courcel, Jean Bouise and the very young André Dussolier, chosen because he knew them capable of bringing to the image the emotion, the pathos of the story. They are indeed remarkable. Some scenes were shot in the presence of Arthur Conte, then CEO of the ORTF.He took the opportunity to express his attachment to prestigious fiction that the public service must fund without counting.

Nicole Courcel and André Dussolier in the adaptation of Madame Bovary by Pierre Cardinal.

INA / Screenshot

Finally, a few weeks before the broadcast, the question of the "

" arose: should we ban

to children under 12?

The "

" hesitated, before authorizing it without restriction.

Love has no age…