The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947) - film review

Paris, 1880.  After seeing military action in Africa, Georges Duroy finds himself virtually penniless, barely existing on the money he earns from his low-paid job.  By chance, he meets an old school friend, Charles Forestier, who has become a successful journalist.   Forestier offers Duroy the opportunity to write articles for his paper, which his friend gladly accepts. With the help of Forestier’s wife Madeleine, who is used to writing under her husband’s name, Duroy has soon embarked on a promising career in journalism.  As he does so, he begins an affair with Clotilde de Marelle, a young widow who loves him devotedly and christens him Bel-Ami.  By now Duroy realises the power he has over women and how he may use this to his advantage.  When Forestier dies, he wastes no time marrying his widow, and then seduces the wife of his employer, Monsieur Walter.  Duroy’s ambition drives him to even greater acts of cruelty.  Having benefited from a legacy left to his wife, Duroy divorces her and begins to court Suzanne, Walter’s young daughter.  Realising that his employer will oppose the union, Duroy buys himself the title of a noble family, unaware that one man still possesses the title.  Madame Walter takes her revenge by finding the man whose title he has usurped.   The latter challenges Duroy to a duel...

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami was the third of three literary adaptations by producer-director Albert Lewin, who directed just six films in the course of his career.  W. Somerset Maugham and Oscar Wilde provided the source for Lewin’s previous two films, The Moon and Sixpence (1942) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), whilst this one was based on the novella Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant.  In all three of these films, the lead was played by the English actor George Sanders, who was then at the highpoint of his career in Hollywood.

Two things make this a particularly memorable film.  First and foremost, there is Russell Metty’s cinematography, which, with its ominous stark chiaroscuro, conveys a hypocrisy-ridden society where scoundrels such as Duroy prosper at the expense of the virtuous minority.  There is one brief moment of revelation – achieved by the insertion of a colour shot of a painting by Max Ernst (The Temptation of St. Anthony) - when Duroy sees his own vile soul and seems to recoil in horror.  But the web of darkness persists, driving the caddish protagonist on to his ineluctable doom.  The duel sequence which ends the cycle of villainy has the bleakness of the darkest film noir and the poetry of a gothic romance.

Then there are the performances.  No one plays silky smooth venality quite like George Sanders and he is an obvious choice for the role of the eponymous scoundrel, Bel-Ami.  Sanders is particularly good here and convincingly brings a dual aspect to his character.  Although Duroy’s actions are invariably bad, we do see the inner conflict that lurks beneath the surface, a sense that Duroy really wants to be a decent man but just cannot.  It is the world around him, a sick greed-driven society, that has made him what he is; he is too weak to free himself from the mould into which he has been cast.   The subtle pathos of Sanders’s portrayal is underlined by the heart-rending performances from the actresses who play his victims, Angela Lansbury and Ann Dvorak, making this a haunting and compelling melodrama.

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