The Smiling Madame Beudet

In a 1921 lecture, Dulac compares her approach for another film, La Belle Dame sans merci, with Impressionist painting methods: "Following an Impressionist method, I employed notations. And for an Impressionist painting to come together, one shouldn't show a small parcel of colours, but all colours, and each one separately is such a small touch that we only see its significance in the blending of the ensemble." She goes on to describe her broader cinematic strategy in a similar manner: "Impressionist in the things that it unites in order to create an inner whole, such is my vision of the cinema." This approach is further developed in The Smiling Madame Beudet, where Dulac uses devices such as the dissolve, distorting lenses, and superimposition, as a means of expressing her female protagonist’s psychological states and subjectivity. Each shot is juxtaposed with others to create visual associations that suggest underlying truths (e.g. a close-up of Madame Beudet hands playing the piano is paired with a close-up of Mr Beudet’s hands counting money to convey their incompatibility), reminiscent of the Impressionist artists’ plein air studies, in which they broke with traditional methods in favour of a system of notation. Sketching the scene before them with broad strokes and dabs of paint, they implied the movement of dresses and bodies or the shimmering of water. Viewed as a whole, these studies captured their experience of fleeting moments, not unlike the film insofar as it is presented almost entirely from Madame Beudet's perspective via montage.

With live music accompaniment by harpist Eduardo Raon.