Joseph Bologna arrives in Paris seventeen sixty something and challenges Mozart to a game of duelling banjos. Duelling violins. He's very good at it; the audience give him a standing ovation and Mozart leaves in a huff. He then beats the the best swordsmen in France in a fencing bout, in front of the Queen, who makes him a knight. He wears a lot of wigs and drinks a lot of champagne and composes a lot of classical music with many close-ups of dextrous fingers wiggling along fretboards. It looks as if he is going to be created head of the Paris Opera; but some of the divas get up a petition against him; so he isn't. Instead he organises a benefit gig to finance the French Revolution and leaves the country in a hurry. Some of his actual music plays over the closing credits. I think it sounds exactly like Mozart; but then I think everything by Mozart sounds exactly like Mozart, so I'm probably not the best judge.
The point of the story is, of course, that Bologna is a black man. Pre-revolutionary France was in some ways not quite as racist as you might suppose, but in other ways it quite definitely was. Bologna's father was a plantation owner; his Mother is described as an enslaved African. Someone refers to Bologna as a mulatto at one point, but otherwise he's called a negro, as opposed to any other nastier word. His father acknowledged the illegitimate child and packed him off to a posh school. He doesn't get anything out of Dad's will (I believe that black people were not legally allowed to inherit) but his father does give his mother her freedom and allow her to join him in Paris. She says that her son "looks like a white boy" which seems anachronistic. But this is the sort of historical drama in which people say that marriage is not on the cards and talk about leveraging their celebrity. Which is fair enough, I suppose: they are all talking in English with posh accents (except at the ends of scenes when they say "Adieu" and "Au revoir"). But given all the frocks and wigs it seems to me to break the illusion. The opening scene made me think that maybe this was going to be a movie of conscious anachronism, late-baroque composers reimagined as pop-stars, First Knight out of Liztomania. But it wasn't.
After literally minutes of in-depth research on Wikipedia, I discover that Chevalier de Saint-Georges was entirely real, that he had a ridiculously sensational life, that he met practically everyone interesting in the eighteenth century and that he was even more talented than the film depicts. Clearly it's a story worth telling. But the film seems to offer us a fairly generic historical romp. From the moment the posh lady at the duel identifies herself as Marie Antoinette, we know exactly how the film is going to develop. Outsider arrives in Paris; Paris embraces outsider because of his prodigious talent; Paris turns out to be prejudiced against outsiders after all; outsider leaves Paris. The Chevalier needs a great singer to star in his opera. The singer's husband utterly forbids her from appearing in the opera, and then leaves the country. The great singer appears in the opera, and goes to bed with the Chevalier. The great singer's husband returns and is most put out. He is even more put out a few months later when he sees the skin-tone of "his" baby. I think the relationship of Bologna and Marie-Josephine may have been based on genuine historical rumours, but all the forbidding made me think of Titanic, not to say Dead Poet's Society.
Is it true that "head of the Paris opera" was the most prestigious artistic position in Europe; but that women who sang were regarded as little better than whores? For all I know it might have been.
Over and over again; the movie opts for stock scenes and stock responses. I do not imagine that Jesuit educational establishments in the seventeen hundreds were very comfortable, and presumably even less so for racial minorities, but the film resorts to narrative semaphore, a split second flashback of Joseph being kicked down the stairs while older boys shout slurs at him, as in every boarding school scene in every movie from Tom Brown's Schooldays to Goodbye Christopher Robin. Passage of time is denoted by speeded up shots of clouds whizzing over Paris streets, during which one was tempted to call out "it's only a model". After the Marquis de Montalembert (Marc Rene) has forbidden Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving) from appearing in the Anonymous Lover, we get a Generic Audition Montage in which a sequence of fat old ladies sing the part badly, just like in every do-the-show-right-here-musical and, indeed, Fishermen's Friends 2. What would a clever man do after having been passed over for an important job because of racism? Write a satirical opera? Produce his own opera and make a success of it? Write a witty letter to the paper? Challenge someone to a duel, being as how he is the the Best Swordsman In France? Or get drunk and insult the Queen and Mr Gluck at a soiree, knocking over quite a lot of scenery in the process?
Kelvin Harrison Jnr (who I last saw as Christian in Cyrano) is brilliant and compelling in the lead; Lucy Boynton is an unexpectedly enjoyable and approachable Queen. The revolutionaries distribute bread to the poor, but she doesn't mention cake. Indeed, we don't see a great deal of poverty or oppression: liberté and égalité rather comes across as an intellectual hobby enjoyed by some rich kids and intellectuals. Simply a game for rich young boys to play, as the fellow sang. The musical scenes -- the duel, the rehearsals, and the big revolutionary show -- are exquisite. And I know more about the so-called Black Mozart than I did this morning. It being a preview, Everyman gave us a free bar of chocolate and sold us a genre-appropriate cocktail. But I didn't think the film quite worked. Not nearly enough notes.
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
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