Films Vs. Novels: Madame Bovary

For all of the novels that we have read, and the respective films that we have watched, there have been quite a few differing opinions on whether a movie was better than its respective novel, or whether the novel was the better of the two media. This argument needed to look past just the surface of whether the movie was good or not, though that is a factor in it, but it also needed to focus on whether the movie kept out any useless information that was in the novel, whether the novel was visually presented well by the director, whether or not the film tried to change something important to the story, such as the setting, and also whether the film remained realistic yet true. The novel itself must also be looked at while judging the film, since there are some important issues that may need to be resolved in translating the novel to a film; for example, someone's suicide may need to be played down in a film if it was too violent. Perhaps in the novel, the person may have slashed their throat, therefore dying in a horrendous manner. The film producers, not wanting to have something of this nature in their film, may decide to change the manner in which this happens, perhaps using poison instead, to make it "nice", or to completely cut out any usage of blood, for example in the numerous film productions of "Romeo and Juliet" I've seen, there is never any blood associated with Juliet stabbing herself in the heart, while, in reality, there would be a lot. Not that this is necessarily bad, but I'm just picky as far as these things are concerned. In the case of Madame Bovary, I think that the film was almost equal to the novel. There were some differences, but those differences were necessary to make the film acceptable to audiences. This film did come out in a time of a more morally strict America, so they couldn't go all out on everything that occurred in the novel, plus they had to work within a time constraint. Even with these restrictions, Minnelli did a good job of bringing this novel to life on screen.