AllMovie

This German adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary seldom appears in the standard movie source books (certainly never as often as the 1949 Vincente Minnelli version!), but it might well be worth seeing again. This time, the magnificent Pola Negri is cast as Emma Bovary, the unhappy bride of bourgeois Charles Bovary (Arlbert Wascher). Bored with her husband's narrow-minded attitudes and provincial lifestyle, Emma dreams of great wealth and a "perfect" romance with a young lover. When she gets the chance to escape her boredom, it is with handsome Roudolphe Boulanger (Ferdinand Marian). Alas, Madame Bovary's dreams of lasting happiness are doomed from the start, not so much by fate as by her own inner demons. The German Madame Bovary was consummately produced and acted, yet failed to strike a responsive chord with the public, possibly because Negri was too dynamic a performer for the limits of her role.