Plot

An unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.

One of the first feminist movies, The Smiling Madame Beudet is the story of an intelligent woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Her husband is used to playing a stupid practical joke in which he puts an empty revolver to his head and threatens to shoot himself. One day, while the husband is away, she puts bullets in the revolver. However, she is stricken with remorse and tries to retrieve the bullets the next morning. Her husband gets to the revolver first only this time he points the revolver at her.—Anurag Garg <garo@cs.ucla.edu>

Madame Beudet lives a quiet mundane life. The most exciting thing that happens to her on most days is the arrival of the mail. Clearly she is in a loveless marriage and has no desire to spend any time with her husband - evident when she refuses to accompany him to the opera when he receives free tickets from a friend. Her husband doesn't like her attitude and responds as he always does: he takes an unloaded revolver from his desk drawer and says he should just shoot himself. When Madame Baudet decides to put bullets in the gun in the hopes he really would die, it leads to an unexpected conclusion.—garykmcd