To criticize this movie so many decades later seems belated, yet the book is a classic and the eponymous character is a sort of media type we all know very well today.
Sanders's Bel Ami is one of the great portrayals of its era, but it ain't the book, and as such, the phrase, based on, is more weighty than usual.
Whilst the movie largely uses the plot - with one major caveat - it also deviates from it for several reasons from the book. For a start, Bel Ami on screen is not like the Maupassnat's creation. He is too clever and well spoken from the get go,whereas the real Bel Ami is a hillbilly who is a very vulgar and crude speaker, let alone, writer. He develops abilities but is still not even a bourgeois, and certainly not a gentleman.
Secondly, the women use him as a gigolo because he's good looking and sexy and they help him but the female sexuality in the book is way too racy for a Hollywood film of this period, and so it is erased in favor of his cunning, which he has, but only because the woman take him in for their own pleasure. Ultimately, they play each other in a self interested game; Bel Ami uses the women but they had exploited him too.
As to the ending, well, Hollywood had a morals police ensuring bad actions got their just deserts, which the recent film version ignores and follows the book. ( It has its own faults in Patterson but that is another thing). Maupassant's Bel Ami's is a clever observation of a political and media culture which is not so distant to now This film tale is the ersatz kiddie version as if to protect the viewer from real insight.
Sanders's Bel Ami is one of the great portrayals of its era, but it ain't the book, and as such, the phrase, based on, is more weighty than usual.
Whilst the movie largely uses the plot - with one major caveat - it also deviates from it for several reasons from the book. For a start, Bel Ami on screen is not like the Maupassnat's creation. He is too clever and well spoken from the get go,whereas the real Bel Ami is a hillbilly who is a very vulgar and crude speaker, let alone, writer. He develops abilities but is still not even a bourgeois, and certainly not a gentleman.
Secondly, the women use him as a gigolo because he's good looking and sexy and they help him but the female sexuality in the book is way too racy for a Hollywood film of this period, and so it is erased in favor of his cunning, which he has, but only because the woman take him in for their own pleasure. Ultimately, they play each other in a self interested game; Bel Ami uses the women but they had exploited him too.
As to the ending, well, Hollywood had a morals police ensuring bad actions got their just deserts, which the recent film version ignores and follows the book. ( It has its own faults in Patterson but that is another thing). Maupassant's Bel Ami's is a clever observation of a political and media culture which is not so distant to now This film tale is the ersatz kiddie version as if to protect the viewer from real insight.