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Continuing its highly laudable work in bringing the best of foreign films to the Harvard audience, Mrs. Rand's Committee is now offering a French adaptation of Flaubert's "Madamo Bovary." The picture is especially rich in scenic beauty with its panoramic views of the quietly appealing French countryside. The magnificent photography is in fact the film's chief virtue, for though the acting is capable and scenario well crystallized from the lengthy plot of the novel the picture is considerably protracted and it fails to maintain the serious aspects of the theme as it concentrates overmuch on satirizing the bourgeois mores of the unfortunate Madame Bovary. The comedy effects are good and the general effect is amusing, but its failure to bring out the fundamental problem which faces the heroine renders it unfortunately inconsequential. Flaubert's treatment of this theme, the struggle of a bourgeois matron to find romance and love, is no doubt superficially satirical, but underneath there is the serious development of this theme. It is this phase of the novel which makes it great and this the movie has neglected. Although it has thus lost the opportunity of making itself a great movie it does offer considerable amusement and will prove beneficial to those who are desiring to brush up on their conversational French.
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