Madame Bovary is a 1947 Argentine historical drama film of the classical era of Argentine cinema, directed by Carlos Schlieper and starring Mecha Ortiz, Roberto Escalada and Enrique Diosdado. It is an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary.
The narrative is introduced in a courtroom where the author, Gustave Flaubert, challenges a decision to ban his novel, Madame Bovary, which has been deemed vile and immoral.
Flaubert argues his case by telling the story of Emma to the court and the audience, a sensitive but capricious woman whose desperate efforts to overcome the bourgeois conventions of a dull. She begins a series of passionate but failed affairs, seeking excitement and wealth. With her debts mounting and her lovers gone, Emma is unable to find money to pay them off. She takes arsenic and dies a painful death, after which her husband, Carlos, discovers the truth of her affairs through her love letters. Carlos, heartbroken and devastated, dies in poverty, and their daughter is sent to live with a poor aunt.
The film concludes with the court ruling that the novel can be published, accepting Flaubert's account as the "true story".