The Private Affairs of Bel Ami

United States

1947

112 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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SCR Albert Lewin, Guy de Maupassant

CAST George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, John Carradine, Susan Douglas Rubes, Ann Dvorak, Hugo Haas, Warren William, Frances Dee, Albert Bassermann, Marie Wilson, Katherine Emery, Richard Fraser, John Good, David Bond, Leonard Mudie, Judy Cook, Karolyn Grimes, Wyndham Standing

Writer Georges Duroy (George Sanders) is one social-climbing S.O.B. who does most of his climbing over the warm (and cold) bodies of women. He begins with Rachel (Marie Wilson), a hanger-on in the cafes and Folies Bergere crowd, and then moves on to dally with Clotilde de Morelle (Angela Lansbury.) Always striving to move upward on the social scale, he ditches her to marry Madeleine Forestier (Ann Dvorak). Now he gets on the fast track. He persuades Madame Walter (Katherine Emery), the wife of his publisher, to fall in love with him, and then compromises Madeleine to frame a divorce, so he can pursue Madame Walter’s daughter, Suzanne (Susan Douglas, before somebody decided her later-married name was her most-often used screen name.) He moves along so well that ere long he is in legal position to usurp the title of one of France’s most noble houses. The moral, at the end, is it is okay to mess with French women, but triffling with French titles is going too far. —IMDb

Director

Albert Lewin

Albert Lewin (1894–1968) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 23, 1894 and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a Master’s degree at Harvard and taught English at the University of Missouri. During World War I, he served in the military and was afterwards appointed assistant national director of the American Jewish Relief Committee. He later became a drama and film critic for the Jewish Tribune until the early 1920s, when he went to Hollywood to become a reader for Samuel Goldwyn. Later he worked as a script clerk for directors King Vidor and Victor Sjöström before becoming a screenwriter at MGM in 1924.

Lewin was appointed head of the studio’s script department and by the late 20s was Irving Thalberg’s personal assistant and closest associate. Nominally credited as an associate producer, he produced several of MGM’s most important films of the 1930s. After Thalberg’s death, he joined Paramount as… read more