This is the trailer for one of my favorite films, The Lady and the Duke. I’ve a mental list that grows longer over time (I’ll post it someday), and that list changes with time. This film, so demanding of one’s use of empathy, remains very high on my list.
It is adapted from the memoirs of an Edinburgh woman (a courtesan of great beauty) living in the Paris of the French Revolution. Grace Dalrymple Elliott was notable enough to have been the subject of paintings by Thomas Gainsborough. She is portrayed brilliantly, powerfully, with deep sensitivity by actress Lucy Russell.
If you are a lover of action films, this one isn’t for you. There is not a single car chase in the entire movie. The film is a remarkable creation about a fascinating woman and her exploits in a dangerous place in the midst of a terrifying time.
June 17, 2009 at 18:09
Sounds like my kind of film. I’ve just found it on Amazon.co.uk for a mere £3.68, so it is now on my wish list.
June 17, 2009 at 20:28
The French Revolution has always made my blood run particularly cold. It’s a cautionary tale about the capacity humankind has to make a dogma even of Reason, which is supposed to be the absence of dogma.
But why on earth is a Scottish woman known as “l’Anglaise?!”
June 17, 2009 at 21:44
I suspect because she was an English speaker and from the British Empire (once mistress to George IV). You are not the only one to ask that question.
The title translated into English (“The Lady and the Duke”) makes the flick sound like something staring John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn — that happened but this isn’t the DVD.
For a good, realistic starting point to learn more about French history and the French Revolution in particular France: a modern history by the French historian and critic Albert Guerard, albeit a little dated (1968) is probably the best thumbnail sketch of French history ever written for benefit of Anglophones. It was part of a much wider series of histories assembled in collaboration with the deservedly famous American Historian, Alan Nevins.
Professor Guerard, in every book he ever wrote in a very long, distinguished career, included invaluable reading lists to guide interested readers on wonderful journeys through French history, biography and culture. Bibliographies, done right, are wonderful things.
June 17, 2009 at 22:03
Bibliographies have gotten me into terrible trouble from time to time, I can’t begin to tell you.
January 12, 2010 at 05:22
[...] set in the modern era and addressed questions and explored choices we make in matters of love. My favorite film by him was set in the Paris of the French Revolution and starred Lucy Russell as courtesan Grace Dalrymple [...]
January 12, 2010 at 07:26
I loved the way this film looked at certain points; the scene in which Grace’s maid watches the execution of Louis XIV was absolutely stunning, for example.
But what I particularly took from the film was the insight it gave me in to the politics and history of the Revolution.
zeusiswatching – Have you seen Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, out of interest? How do you think the two compare? By contrast that was a film that told me precisely nothing of the history of the Revolution, although I enjoyed it for other reasons.
January 12, 2010 at 23:57
I’ve not seen that film. I read a biography of the Queen by a fellow named Belloc, not my favorite author and not my favorite work by him, but I’ve not seen any depiction in the Cinema. I’m not the movie hound I used to be.
July 7, 2011 at 04:56
[...] and Celedon” from our local library system. I hadn’t seen it before (unlike other films by Rohmer that I’ve probably viewed a half-dozen times). I really enjoyed this [...]