In the book, as I recall, at the very last moment it seems as if there might be a moment of peace for her... and then an old blind caterwauling musician whom Emma had hated hearing (I think in one of her liaisons with Léon, maybe) passes under the window singing something raucously earthy, and she screams at the intrusion, and that's it, she's dead, she died in agony and grimacing horror and that's what there is.

Minnelli deletes the blind musician (I think the scene with the priest may have been a compromise-substitution: by the moment of peace, she's too far gone to notice or care), but otherwise that sounds right to me.

I don't know how well Flaubert really liked humanity, but I like people a lot better than his narrative voice in this book did, at any rate.

That's fair. I tend to steer clear of narratives that hate everybody in them.