Bel Ami (1939 film)

Last updated
Bel Ami
Directed by Willi Forst
Written by Guy de Maupassant (original novel)
Willi Forst, Axel Eggebregt (screenplay)
Produced byWilli Forst
Starring Olga Chekhova
Hilde Hildebrand
Ilse Werner
Lizzi Waldmüller
Willi Forst
Johannes Riemann
Will Dohm
Aribert Wäscher
Hubert von Meyerinck
Hadrian Maria Netto
Bruno Ziener
Cinematography Theodore J. Pahle
Edited by Hans Wolff
Music by Theo Mackeben
Production
company
Willi Forst-Films
Distributed by Tobis Film
Release date
21 February 1939
Running time
96 minutes
CountryGermany
Language German

Bel Ami is a 1939 German film directed by Willi Forst. It is loosely based on Guy de Maupassant's 1885 novel Bel Ami , with considerable changes to the original plot.

Contents

Plot

In Paris, in about 1900, George Duroy, just returned from Morocco, spends a night with the singer Rachel, who is rehearsing the song Bel Ami. Later at a party he tells the newspaper editor Forestier about Morocco. At the request of the ladies present Duroy is engaged by Walter, proprietor of La Vie Française, as a journalist.

Forestier's wife Madeleine, who is also the mistress of the Député Laroche, whom she allows to exploit her in order to influence the newspaper as Laroche wishes, helps Duroy in the composition of his texts. Forestier becomes jealous of Duroy and divorces Madeleine.

The Minister for the Colonies, who has campaigned for a restrained foreign policy, is obliged to resign. His successor is Laroche, who initially stands for interventionist policies, because of his ownership of land in Morocco, is seen through by Moroccan nobles and blackmailed. In order to give his change of position an acceptable public appearance he asks Madeleine to marry Duroy, who has meantime risen to editor-in-chief. She does so, but the marriage does not last long.

Duroy saves Laroche's daughter Suzanne when her horse bolts. Without introducing themselves they arrange to meet at the opera ball that evening. There, thanks to Rachel, who for a long time has been performing the song Bel Ami in a plush revue, Duroy learns the truth about Laroche's intrigues, which he publishes in his newspaper. Duroy is in love with Suzanne and divorces Madeleine to marry her. Laroche resigns, and Suzanne urges Duroy to enter politics. As minister Duroy prevents his former boss Walter from continuing the crooked intrigues of Laroche. He takes leave of his former wife Madeleine, Rachel and Frau von Marelle, in order to devote himself to his marriage with Suzanne.

Political context

The film was made on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, at the time when Germany's going to war against France was already a very likely prospect. In Nazi Germany, the film industry was closely controlled by the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. While Bel Ami was not conceived as an outright propaganda film, the theme of corruption in the French society and politics - prominently present in the Maupassant original - was well suited to the thrust of Nazi propaganda at the time the film was made.

Other film references

In the film It Was Always So Nice With You (1954) Willi Forst plays a film director who together with two musicians (played by Georg Thomalla and Heinz Drache), composes the lyrics of the hit song Bel Ami, which finally he sings.

DVD publication

The film is listed in the printed edition of the "Lexikon des internationalen Films", 1987, with a runtime of 100 minutes and an age restriction of 16 and over. The DVD published by Kinowelt in 2007 contains a version about 2 minutes shorter and free to the over-12s.

Notes

    Related Research Articles

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy de Maupassant</span> French writer (1850–1893)

    Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a 19th-century French author, celebrated as a master of the short story, as well as a representative of the naturalist school, depicting human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.

    <i>Bel-Ami</i> 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant

    Bel-Ami is the second novel by French author Guy de Maupassant, published in 1885; an English translation titled Bel Ami, or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel first appeared in 1903.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Helmut Käutner</span> German film director

    Helmut Käutner was a German film director active mainly in the 1940s and 1950s. He entered the film industry at the end of the Weimar Republic and released his first films as a director in Nazi Germany. Käutner is relatively unknown outside of Germany, although he is considered one of the best filmmakers in German film history. He was one of the most influential film directors of German post-war cinema and became known for his sophisticated literary adaptations.

    Lukas Ridgeston is a Slovak actor and director in gay erotic movies and model in Bel Ami gay erotic magazines and books. He was born in Bratislava, then part of the former Czechoslovakia, now capital of Slovakia. Lukas Ridgeston is best known as "The King of Gay Porn" or just "The King".

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Willi Forst</span> Austrian actor

    Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer. As a debonair actor he was a darling of the German-speaking film audiences, as a director, one of the most significant makers of the Viennese period musical melodramas and comedies of the 1930s known as Wiener Filme. From the mid-1930s he also recorded many records, largely of sentimental Viennese songs, for the Odeon Records label owned by Carl Lindström AG.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Lindegger</span>

    Albert Lindegger or Lindi was a Swiss painter and illustrator. He is best known as a political satirist.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Willy Schmidt-Gentner</span> German composer (1894–1964)

    Willy Schmidt-Gentner was one of the most successful German composers of film music in the history of German-language cinema. He moved to Vienna in 1933. At his most productive, he scored up to 10 films a year, including numerous classics and masterpieces of the German and Austrian cinema.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiener Film</span> Austrian film genre

    Wiener Film is an Austrian film genre, consisting of a combination of comedy, romance and melodrama in a historical setting, mostly, and typically, the Vienna of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Wiener Film genre was in production between the 1920s and the 1950s, with the 1930s as its high period.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Lizzi Waldmüller</span> Austrian actress and singer

    Lizzi Waldmüller was an Austrian singer and actress whose breakthrough to stardom came through her role as Rachel in the Willi Forst movie Bel Ami in 1939.

    <i>The Private Affairs of Bel Ami</i> 1947 film by Albert Lewin

    The Private Affairs of Bel Ami is a 1947 American drama film directed by Albert Lewin. The film stars George Sanders as a ruthless cad who uses women to rise in Parisian society, co-starring Angela Lansbury and Ann Dvorak. It is based on the 1885 Guy de Maupassant novel Bel Ami. The film had a 1946 premiere in Paris, Texas. The score is by Darius Milhaud.

    <i>Bel Ami</i> (2012 film) 2012 British film

    Bel Ami is a 2012 drama film directed by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod and starring Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci and Colm Meaney. The film is based on the 1885 French novel of the same name by Guy de Maupassant.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Steinhoff</span> German film director

    Hans Steinhoff was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he produced in Nazi Germany

    BelAmi is a gay pornographic film studio with offices in Bratislava, Prague and Budapest. It was established in 1993 by filmmaker George Duroy, a Slovak native who took his pseudonym from the protagonist Georges Duroy in Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel Ami. In addition to hardcore DVDs, BelAmi and Bruno Gmünder Verlag also produce calendars and photo books, such as Howard Roffman's Private Moments: Bel Ami (2009), and its performers are frequent headliners at nightclubs and similar venues around Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Uberto Pasolini</span> Italian film producer and director

    Uberto Pasolini Dall'Onda is an Italian film producer, director, and former investment banker known for producing the 1997 film The Full Monty and directing and producing the 2008 film Machan and the 2013 film Still Life.

    <i>The Burning Secret</i> 1933 film

    The Burning Secret is a 1933 Austrian-German drama film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Alfred Abel, Hilde Wagener and Hans Joachim Schaufuß. It was based on the 1913 novella of the same title by Stefan Zweig. It was released by the German branch of Universal Pictures. It was shot at the EFA Studios in Berlin and on location around Ascona in Switzerland. The film's sets were designed by the art director Robert A. Dietrich.

    <i>Bel Ami</i> (1955 film) 1955 Austrian film

    Bel Ami is a 1955 historical drama film directed by Louis Daquin and starring Anne Vernon, Renée Faure and Jean Danet. It was a co-production between Austria, France and East Germany. The film was shot in the Soviet-controlled Rosenhügel Studios in Vienna.

    <i>The Temptation of Saint Anthony</i> (Ernst) Painting by Max Ernst

    The Temptation of Saint Anthony is a 1945 painting by the German artist Max Ernst. It depicts the desert father Anthony the Great as he is tormented by demons in Egypt. The painting is located at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany.

    Bel Ami is a British five part television costume drama based on the 1885 French novel Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant. It aired in 1971 on BBC 2. The series starred Robin Ellis as Georges Duroy, John Bryans as Monsieur Walter, Margaret Courtenay as Madame Walter, Elvi Hale as Clotilde de Marelle, Garfield Morgan as Jacques Rivat, Suzanne Neve as Madeleine Forestier, and Maurice Quick as Duroy's manservant. British television historian Claire Monk wrote, "BBC Two's five-part Bel Ami indicatively exhibited the sexual attitudes of its time in its makers' insistence that the story of penniless opportunist Georges Duroy— a social outsider in Parisian society who ruthlessly uses sex to pursue his ambitions— as basically a comedy with the charms of a fantasy world."

    Bel Ami is a 1983 French language television miniseries adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's 1885 novel Bel-Ami. Written by Pierre Moustiers, the two episode series was directed by Pierre Cardinal. The cast included Jacques Weber as Georges Duroy, Aurore Clément as Madeleine Forestier, Michel Auclair as M. Walter, Anne Consigny as Suzanne, Rosette as Rachel, Denis Manuel as Charles Forestier, Micheline Bona as Mme La Roche Mathieu, Johan Corbeau as L'évêque, Dominique Daguier as Le lithographe, and Jacques Deloir as Langremont.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Engelsing</span> German lawyer and resistance fighter (1904–1962)

    Herbert Enke Wilhelm Engelsing was a right-wing German Catholic lawyer in Berlin and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. When the Nazi regime began, Engelsing found himself unable to work in law. Instead he found work in the German film industry, becoming a very successful film producer with Tobis Film. In 1938, Engelsing and his wife Ingeborg became close friends with Libertas and Harro Schulze-Boysen who were part of a resistance organisation against the Nazis. Engelsing maintained a high profile in the film business and low profile in the resistance, but made his mark by introducing many new people into the organisation, brokering deals and providing secure locations for meetings. The couple survived the war and moved to the United States in 1947. Engelsing did not receive permanent residency due to false accusations of being the head of a Soviet sleeper cell.

    References