The plot has often been adapted, in whole or in part, for films and other media:
- In 1928 in the US, a silent film version was The Woman Disputed by Henry King & Sam Taylor.
- In 1932, also in the US, Shanghai Express by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich, was loosely based on the story, with significant changes.
- In 1934, the Moscow Art Players, under the auspices of the Soviet studio Mosfilm, produced a silent film version of "Boule de Suif" called Pyshka (Dumpling). It was adapted and directed by Mikhail Romm and starred Galina Sergeyеva. The film was re-released by Mosfilm in 1955 with a narration and sound effects added to it, but remained unknown outside of Russia until its belated premiere in New York in 1958. New York Times reviewer Howard Thompson describes the film as "little more than a musty curio" but with a storyline that "is still pretty wonderful as a yarn and a scathing commentary on hypocrisy and selfishness"[1]
- In 1935 in Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi made Maria no Oyuki (Oyuki the Virgin).
- Of his 1939 U.S.A film Stagecoach, John Ford said it was "really 'Boule de Suif'"[2] and McBride attributes the "film's sharp social criticism" to its being "more deeply influence[d] by Maupassant" than by Ernest Haycox's 1937 short story "The Stage to Lordsburg" that established the framework of the film itself.[3]
- In 1940 Irish playwright Lennox Robinson adapted the story for the stage under the name Roly Poly. The production premiered at the Gate Theatre in November 1940. The production was directed by Hilton Edwards.[4]
- In 1943 in the US, a remake of Shanghai Express by Ralph Murphy was called Night Plane from Chungking.
- In 1944 Hollywood director Robert Wise undertook a project for RKO Radio Pictures titled Mademoiselle Fifi, based on two of Maupassant's short stories, "Boule de Suif" and the 1882 "Mademoiselle Fifi". This version starred Simone Simon as Elizabeth Bousset, who is the "little laundress" of the short story "Mademoiselle Fifi" rather than the prostitute of "Boule de Suif", and the dandified and lecherous lieutenant is played by Kurt Kreuger.[5]
- In 1944 the Mexican film The Escape directed by Norman Foster was set during the French Intervention in Mexico.
- In 1945 a French film version was released as Boule de Suif, released in the US in 1947 as Angel and Sinner. This film directed by Christian-Jaque, based on a screenplay by Henri Jeanson and starring Micheline Presle and Louis Salou, also imported much of the character of the lecherous Prussian soldier from the Maupassant story "Mademoiselle Fifi".
- In 1951 Peking Express by William Dieterle was a U.S.A remake of "Night Plane from Chungking".
- The 1959 episode, "Lady on the Stagecoach"[6] from the American television series Have Gun Will Travel, with Richard Boone as Paladin, was based on Boule de Suif. The half-hour episode transposed the scene from France to the Western US in 1868. In this version, the young woman was the daughter of an Apache chief. Her suitor was the leader of an outlaw gang. The outlaw is foiled in his attempt to abduct the woman by Paladin. In an added twist, the young woman forgives the outlaw leader for trying to abduct her and tells Paladin to let him go, because, she says, "He said he had respect for me."
- In 1959 Anatole Litvak's The Journey with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner borrowed heavily from the plot device of a group of travellers detained by an authoritarian foreign officer with a romantic interest in an attractive passenger.
- In July 2006, the opera The Greater Good, or The Passion of Boule de Suif opened as a part of the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown, New York.[7] The opera was composed by Stephen Hartke based on a libretto by Phillip Littell and directed by David Schweizer.[8]
- In 2007, Dr. Kausar Mahmood translated Boule de Suif and many other stories into the Urdu language under the title of " Momi Gainde". It was published by Takhleeqat, Mozang Road, Lahore.[1]
- In 2009, it was adapted and drawn by Li-An as a French-language graphic novel and released by Delcourt Press.[9] In an interview, Li-An noted that one reason Boule de Suif was chosen for the Delcourt "Ex Libris" collection was that it had been "more or less at the base of John Ford's Stagecoach" and that the original short story offered a timeless message about human nature and how the "value of a person does not depend on social status" but rather on one's own personality.[10]
