La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet) is a short French impressionist silent film made in 1923,[1][2] directed by pioneering avant-garde cinema director Germaine Dulac.

Monsieur Beudet frequently puts an empty revolver to his head and threatens to shoot himself as a practical joke or to emphasize his frustration.

While he is gone, Madame Beudet spends some time reflecting on her marriage to a slovenly, unromantic man who does things like lock the lid of her piano when he's upset with her; she puts a bullet into her husband's revolver so he will accidentally kill himself the next time he repeats his joke.

Unfortunately, that day Monsieur Beudet's office is never unoccupied long enough for her to remove the bullet from the revolver.

[2][4][5] Les Misères de l'aiguille (1914) and its themes of militant feminism, however, predate the 1923 Dulac film.