Many of today’s storytellers seem to be trying hard to make amends for historical oversights. See TV’s popular Bridgerton, which whimsically insists (based on some dubious historical rumors) that Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, was of Black African descent.
I never saw Belle, the 2013 British drama, which embroiders the details of the actual life of an eighteenth-century young woman. History says she was welcomed into the household of an English aristocrat because she was the mixed-race daughter of his nephew and an enslaved African woman living in the Wests Indies. We know about Belle through a 1779 painting, commissioned by the First Earl of Mansfield, showing her and his own daughter as well-dressed youthful companions. But few details of her adult life are available, and so the filmmakers were free to invent a story that coincides with Britain’s 1807 abolition of the slave trade.
Then there’s the fascinating 2022 film, Chevalier, about an 18th century musician who became a major figure in his own day. Joseph Bologne, who was later granted the title Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was born in Guadeloupe, the son of a French planter and a 17-year-old slave of African descent. An unusually gifted child, Joseph was sent to France to be educated, excelling in fencing, shooting, horsemanship, and above all music. A violinist from an early age, he developed a great deal of confidence in his talents. (The film shows him, as a young man, interrupting a concerto performed by the visiting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in order to suggest that the two perform the piece side by side, in a kind of classical fiddle-off. Which they do, with dazzling results.)_
Among the aristocracy of 18th century France, Bologne was alternately viewed as a genius and a fraud, an “upstart Mulatto” and something of a sex symbol. At least, he was a great favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette, who attended many performances of his work. By this time, he was busily composing violin sonatas, chamber pieces, symphonies concertantes, and comic operas, sometimes for his own orchestras, while also taking time out to defeat local fencing masters who had sneered at his racial heritage. In 1776, he lost the prestigious post of orchestra conductor at the Paris Opera when some of the players refused to perform under his direction.
I gather the historical record has little to say about his love life. Not surprisingly, the movie makes up for this omission. Though Bologne (rising American actor Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is handsome and hunky, it is made clear that he’s resigned to never marrying. As we’re told, his marriage to a white woman would have then been illegal under French law. And if he were to wed a Black woman, he’d have to forfeit his much-prized title. That doesn’t stop him, though, from having a torrid affair with a beautiful and talented aristocrat (Samara Weaving), whose powerful husband doesn’t want her singing in public. Alas, it doesn’t end well.
The film fades out, circa 1789. as revolutionary forces arise to take on the power of the French monarchy. Bologne, who has learned (partly through his spirited mother) to value the Black side of his inheritance, has a small moment of triumph, one that’s probably too theatrical to be true. But we do know, via an on-screen legend, that he went on to serve as a colonel in the Légion St.-Georges, comprised of “citizens of color” fighting in opposition to the Bourbon status quo. There was clearly a lot more to his life than was seen in the movie. Maybe there’s a plan for a sequel?
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