Customer Reviews

Private Affairs of Bel Ami [VHS]

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George Sanders never gave a bad performance. Here, he's at the top of his form as the charming cad who leaves an array of weeping women in his wake as he relentlessly climbs to the social pinnacle of 19th century France. He comes closest to loving etherally beautiful Angela Lansbury but tosses her aside, too. Love does not conquer all here. The large cast is uniformly top rate. Among Bel Ami's other cast-offs are Ann Dvorak, Frances Dee, Marie Wilson, with Katerine Emery and Susan Douglas as a wealthy mother and daughter who both succumb to his ruthless allure. Of course, he dumps the mother and asks the father for the daughter's hand! Eventually, through the auspices of the women he loves and leaves, he amasses enough money to buy what's he's really wanted all along--an aristocratic title. And therein lies the rub.

The film was directed by Albert Lewin with an ironic European sophistication rarely seen in Hollywood films of the period. The incomparable Russell Metty's photography adds to the splendor. See it.

Yet another entry in my quest to see Warren William movies, "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" is really a starring vehicle for George Sanders, the definitive cad of Hollywood. He holds special attractions for hosts of women, all of whom he misuses while furthering his own selfish desires. I hated the look of this picture; to me, it seemed like a set from "The Twilight Zone"--very unconvincing-looking Paris. Besides Sanders and William, the cast includes Ann Dvorak, John Carradine, and Angela Lansbury. See it if you want to; I don't figure on seeing it again for a couple of years, if then.