. . . Chevalier was a great disappointment for many reasons. Its fast and loose playing with the known facts of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges's biography, and of history even -- Marie Antoinette did not give him his title, that was Louis XV -- are only the beginning.
It's such a shame that this man, who I first learned of via reading letters of (later to be President) John Adams, who was so accomplished, who did so very many important things, just starting with music composition and musicianship, was reduced to an affair with an aristo.
He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Music. He will hit a button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistol Ball.
Recall, that among his many achievements, he successfully led an all-black regiment in the French army -- until, Napoleon erased all Black people of achievement from their positions and out of history, particularly those of military achievement, not least, Alexandre Dumas's father.
This film is the equivalent of making a film of the life of Frederick Douglass, and reducing everything he did and created to the single matter that he married a white woman.
Additionally, thereby, the filmmakers chose to navigate precariously closely those waters on which sail a mainstay of porn, the enslaved black stud and the white lady.
I am not the only person to feel this way. For a single example our (Black, Haitian) friend who is a symphony orchestra director, composer and conductor, who has been conducting performances of the Chevalier's music in many cities, just HATES this film. He, like el V, is particularly outraged by the cutting game between the Chevalier and Mozart that opens the film -- this is something Blues musicians only began, here, in the USA. As per usual, movies, particularly made by Americans, cannot imagine a Black experience that isn't African American. Moreover, it seems that the two composer/musicians were friends, not rivals, with Mozart even living in the Chevalier's house for a short time. But then, movies/tv very, very, VERY seldom know who and what musicians -- or artists generally -- are -- musicians particularly. Really, as Joseph and Amadeus were about the same age, it is far more likely they joyed to make music together than tried to cut each other down. Musicians really like to do that, you know?
The positive for the film is several really fine female actors with juicy roles, even though the characters' depictions are either utterly fantasy or historically wrong for the time -- or non-existent. The exception to this might be the Chevalier's mother.
However, if only inadvertently, the above does point to the essential truth of success in which Napoleon was tutored by those who survived both the Revolution and the Terror, into the Directorate, that in France, "Women are politics." Alas one of the ways this point is made is the filmmakers claim that Marie Antoinette was the reason there was a French Revolution.
