Finding the 2012 version of Bel Ami to be an interesting film,I took a look for other adaptations,and found one starring George Sanders. With my dad being a fan of Sanders,and Father's Day coming up,I decided to make Bel Ami's private affairs public.The plot-Paris 1880:Working at a low-paying job, Georges Duroy is thrilled to run into his old wartime friend Charles Forestier. Going for a meal,Duroy catches the eye of a lady called Rachel. Aware of his pal wanting to climb up the social ladder,Forestier advising Duroy that the best way to do that is to use his charm on women. Finding it easy to wrap the ladies round his little finger,Duroy begins only letting people know him at a skin-deep level.View on the film:Scrolling into the heart of every woman, George Sanders gives a delicious performance as Duroy,with Sanders laying out his devilish cad charms that embrace any woman who takes Duroy's fancy. Whilst he does pour out the charisma,Sanders subtly shows Duroy use it as a method to stay detached,as Duroy freezes any attempted made by others to form an emotional relationship with him. Joined by auteur film maker Hugo Hass as Monsieur Walter and Albert Bassermann giving the title some real upper crust class as Jacques Rival, Angela Lansbury gives a wonderful performance as Marelle,who views the lack of commitment from Duroy into the relationship in a widowed state.Reuniting with Sanders for the third and final time,auteur writer/director Albert Lewin & cinematographer Russell "Touch of Evil" Metty turn the streets of Paris into a ultra-stylised Art Deco paradise,where the luxury shops and mansions of Duroy are surrounded in Art Deco shade. Bringing Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí (whose work was sadly cut from the film) in to give a startling splash of colour,Lewin rains down deep focus shadows for a Melodrama final which eyes the affairs of Duroy.Needing to change the end for the Hays Code,the screenplay by Lewin (who made the film independent of the studios) fires a double sided ending where the Code get their morals,and the viewer gets a bullet of Film Noir pessimism. Loosely adapting Guy de Maupassant's book,Lewin brilliantly continues exploring his major theme of self- centred individuals whose self-imposed isolation causes their own destruction.Never allowing the viewer to get too close to Duroy,Lewin expresses in intelligently written dialogue the façade mask that Duroy makes,as the private affairs of Bel Ami are opened.

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)The weary diffidence of George Sanders makes this movie what it is, but there is a rather large cast of important characters who hold up their types, too. Only Sanders in the lead role (as the Bel Ami) has full roundness to his character. Look, however, for John Carradine and Elsa Lancaster, both welcome and convincing, though they only appear sporadically. Ann Dvorak takes on the second most important role and she's terrific, cast perfectly and acting with cunning.The story is a period piece, set in late 19th century France. It centers really around one idea--Sanders, who is portraying a real lady's man, gets several women interested in him (or he in them) with somewhat suspicious goals (like money) under his hat. The first half of the movie has these women at odds with each other and Sanders playing his hand just so. Then he lands one of them and a different kind of ambition takes over his life, with some tricks to become yet wealthier. And the movie shifts. It gets fairly complex, based on a French novel by Guy de Maupassant. It has enormous potential, and yet it never quite gels. You can imagine a "Magnificent Ambersons" kind of construction to make it work, but that would require more length. And Orson Welles.The writing is naturally amazing at times. The characters, as much as they get developed, are intelligent and say intelligent things. There are two aspects that plague this version. First is Sanders himself. He's one of my favorite actors of this era, but he has a limited kind of style and he's miscast here, lacking the charm and fast wit you would need to pull off all these machinations, some romantic and some political. Second is the way the story is told, cramming the pieces together, jumping from one moment into the future as if there wasn't time to mention that so and so meanwhile died, or that our main man in fact got married. Sometimes this kind of economy makes for a fast movie, but here it feels too harshly edited.And then there is the slight falseness to the filming, all done in studios, with hints of the city in the background, beautiful but unconvincing light, and sound that is dubbed or added and is sometimes painfully wrong (Sanders whistling without moving his lips, Carradine playing a complicated accordion piece on an instrument without keys, footsteps on a stone walk that sound like a wooden stage, a singer who...you get the idea). The director, Albert Lewin, had a thriving career writing for silent movies (there is an irony in that, I suppose), then he became a producer in the 1930s before switching to directing just a half dozen films in the 1940s. Only one of these has a reputation--The Picture of Dorian Gray--with this one a kind of runner-up. But whatever its promise, it struggles to take off as either a romantic heart-tugger or a social high drama.Small tidbit--Uma Thurman and others are filming a remake of this story, and naturally all the womanizing has taken on a sexual quality, from what I can see. That's a strength with the way Lewin shot and edited this early one, because we get the way the leading man is a selfish cad without having to get distracted into the prurient details that would distract, even further, from the larger plot.

There are notable differences between Lewin's film and Maupassant's novel.This is the story of a go-getter ,Georges Duroy (whose nickname Bel -Ami" was invented by his conquests) who makes his way of life ,thanks to women .He's not very educated but he appeals to them a lot.SPOILER:the ending is downright "moral".Albert Lewin was asked to "sweeten" Bel-Ami(Duroy) character and thus completely changed the conclusion:the novel saw the hero's triumph ,his marriage with Suzanne and the mother's despair -whereas in the film she plays the role of a deus ex machina- Generally Hollywood substitutes happy ends for sad endings (remember the priceless nineties version of "les misérables" in which Jean Valjean (Liam Neeson) survives and the excellent though Dieterle' s "hunchback of Notre-Dame"(1939) at the end of which Esmeralda finds happiness:but Valjean and Esmeralda are positive heroes and Hollywood would not see an innocent die.On the other hand, Bel- Ami is so cynical a person that his death is some kind of "happy end".One must add that the fateful final duel is superbly filmed by Lewin .END OF SPOILERIt took forty years (you read well) to get this movie into Maupassant's native land.It was critically-acclaimed and the numerous qualities of Lewin's style were underlined:refinement of the settings -Paris is wonderfully recreated in the studio-,perfection of the cast -not only George Sanders but also Angela Landsbury,sensitive and moving,and Ann Dvorak,fine use of music :"Bel Ami waltz" ,the lullaby Landsbury's daughter,la petite Laurine plays on her piano,and the French traditional "auprès de ma blonde".Bel-Ami's cynicism reaches its climax when he plays cup-and-ball game (bilboquet)while his best friend Charles who suffers from tuberculosis is coughing.That said,the story might be hard to follow for people who are not familiar with the novel.There are many subplots (the title is "private affairs of B.A." whereas the writer's title was simply "Bel-Ami") which intertwines and the script is not always clear:for instance ,B.A. tellsClotilde (Landsbury) that he's going to marry Madeleine-in the novel he does marry her- but later he tells Suzanne he's free. (in the novel he divorces but the film does not give any explanations)Lewin conveyed quite well the "hatred for the provinces " feeling which we hear when Bel -Ami tells how he loves the gai Paris.It's a pity that Duroy's "background" is passed over in silence :although the hero hints at his native Normandy ,the extraordinary scene when Madeleine meets her lover's parents ,two coarse vulgar peasants speaking a colorful patois was not kept by the script writers :it would have provided the film with a sharp contrast.There is one short color shot (a few seconds) :Max Ernst's painting "la tentation de Saint-Antoine" .lewin had already used the trick in his precedent work "the picture of Dorian Gray" (1945).N.B.If you like Maupassant 's adaptations for the screen,you will enjoy:-"Une partie de campagne" Jean Renoir,1936 -"Le plaisir" Max Ophuls ,1951 -"Boule de Suif" Christian-Jacques ,1945 -"Une vie" Alexandre Astruc,1959.

Although hard to get into this film, with a protagonist who is very unlikable and who, for all his scheming, seems to be falling upward in the social hiearchy more than effectively manipulating those he seeks to use, the movie is worth watching in order to contemplate the young and beautiful Angela Lansbury and the older, wiser, but still beautiful Ann Dvorak. And for the climactic duel.(And some might find the couture sufficiently haute to be worth watching.)The score by the great French composer, one of Les Six, Darius Milhaud, is pedestrian. Milhaud is not responsible for the annoying song "Bel Ami" which recurs far too often during the seemingly interminable 112 minutes of the movie in the version I saw.