Director Albert Lewin is often cited as one of the earliest intellectual directors in Hollywood, spending most of his young adulthood as an English academic. As one might expect, his films were often grossly misunderstood and underappreciated in their time. Perhaps the best example of this is his 1946 dramaThe Private Affairs of Bel Ami, adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s novel and starring George Sanders and Angela Lansbury. It received near-unanimous negative reviews at its release, most notably from Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, but it is now widely praised by cinephiles. The film echoes many of the recurring themes in the director's work: artists at war with themselves, harmful obsessions, and a fusion of baroque and surreal styles.
Lewin’s fascination with aesthetics famously manifests itself in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami with a single Technicolor shot juxtaposed against the rest of the film’s black and white. The Technicolor shot in question is of Max Ernst’s grotesque and disturbing The Temptation of St. Anthony. To find this painting, producers held a contest called the Bel Ami International Art Competition in which 11 artists including Salvador Dalí, Leonara Carrington, Eugene Berman, and Dorothea Tanning participated. They each submitted their version of the often-painted story of St. Anthony, which itself reflects the film’s themes. A jury selected Max Ernst’s, and its presence in the film has gone down in film history as incredibly jarring and powerful. |
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