![]() The production is topped off with a novel and lovely score of predominantly piano compositions pretty and lilting, but melancholy and dissonant. While we as an audience enjoy the parade of finery, we can also see how this wardrobe would drive even the richest man into the poorhouse. The costumes, especially Emmas, are a luxurious parade of overindulgence. All the actors here are top notch, and the casting a bit off beat (the lovers aren't exactly dashing), which adds to the interest. In much the same way, while Annis is briskly carrying every scene, Conti just leans into her energy and quietly steals every one of them. Conti is really fine here as a man completely out of his depth with this racehorse of a wife. ![]() When contrasted with Emma's willfulness, her husband seems the infinitely better of the two. ![]() He too is very lazy in his way, but his seems to stem from ignorance. As an actor, Conti often seems to have just woken from a nap, and this dampness is just right for Dr. Tom Conti plays her devoted husband, who is completely devoid of ambition, in work or society. She is bored because she is useless, she is useless because she is too lazy to seek something meaningful to do she wants life to be a party, and resents it when it is not. Her daily trial does not include housework or drudgery, she has maids for that. It is very hard for a modern audience to feel sorry for her. Almost anything to break up the dismal tedium of her life and her disgust with everyone and everything in it. Here she seems to be more in love with the idea of being in love than actually loving. These qualities, of course, are perfect for this character. As an actress she often comes across as bright and hard, flirty and flighty, but cold and self satisfied. In short, she is selfish and inconsiderate, as ugly inside as she is pretty on the outside. She is married to a man who loves her with all his heart, who tries to give her everything she wants, is willing to ruin himself to make her happy, and she still cheats on him and remains miserable. Emma Bovary is not a very sympathetic creature. Many are stagy and slow, and while this production of MADAME BOVARY is very much constrained to stay indoors, this works to advantage for this story of a woman who feels so trapped by her life and her world. This is one of the better BBC historical dramas from the 1970s. ![]()
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