THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947)

Guy de Maupassant’s much filmed story, a Frenchified Rake’s Progress*, two in 1947 alone, this & Mexico, is, as the ad copy says, ‘the history of a scoundrel.’  George Sanders, a decade beyond his lean & hungry days (Louis Jourdan in next year’s LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMEN exactly what was needed . . . to say nothing of Max Ophüls!) is elsewise well cast as the amoral opportunist climbing the ladder of numbingly vain, superficial French La Belle Êpoque upper-crust society, pivoting past friends (male) and lovers (female) to a cozy, influential and profitable position dishing up social & political gossip for a scandal mongering news baron.  Or is till he runs into the Hollywood Production Code for a comeuppance de Maupassant would never have allowed.  Rather misses the point, non?  Written & directed by Albert Lewin, whose taste for literary adaptations labeled him a Hollywood intellectual (Hollywood intellectual manqué closer to the mark), Lewin’s few films all fun to watch (THE MOON AND SIXPENCE very good indeed: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/gauguin-voyage-du-tahiti-2017-moon-and.html), but he never developed a fluid visual style to match his ambitions.  (Here he thinks a Manet mock up gives him all the bona fides needed.)  Stylized sets shot without flair look flat & airless, while pacing remains unvaried regardless of the situation.  Yet what a cast he’s put together, even without studio backing.  Honors go to Ann Dvorak, the widow he marries for business reasons, and implacable enemy Warren William.  And while it was probably a mistake to repeat his shock TechniColor insert of a painting, the trick far more effective in DORIAN GRAY/’44, it’s hardly the only thing that feels like a repeat here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  That’s Sanders doing his own bit of singing.  His substantial baritone hardly ever called upon.  Here, in CALL ME MADAM/’53 he replies in song to Ethel Merman.  (I believe Angela Lansbury for the first time also does her own bit of singing here, previously, at M-G-M, she'd been dubbed and would continue to be.)  https://www.google.com/search?q=call+me+madam+george+sanders+sings&sca_esv=558437297&sxsrf=AB5stBix3nMXf-B5oBiGFyXQN73H_elVkA%3A1692476921962&source=hp&ei=-SXhZJ2TOPylptQPsNymyAw&iflsig=AD69kcEAAAAAZOE0CWJjJqPPE0Sw79V4VrNlK64LLxr3&oq=&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IgAqAggAMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnSO4KUABYAHABeACQAQCYAQCgAQCqAQC4AQHIAQCoAgo&sclient=gws-wiz#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:280714fd,vid:C7wOSy4gyUA

DOUBLE-BILL:  Rex Harrison played this game in grand style in THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (aka THE NOTORIOUS GENTLEMAN), and as it came out in 1945, WWII comes to his moral rescue.