O Belo Brummel

Of all the influences of men's fashion created during the 1800s, none ever compared with the flashes of inspirations set by George Bryan Brummell. This film entitled " Beau Brummell " is a superficial look at the man and his statements of life and fashion. Born in London, educated at Eton and for a time, a close friend of King George IV, Brummell rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful, despite the fact, he was unfortunately, neither. Stewart Granger portrays Beau Brummell with a nonchalant but superior attitude and with the smug style of the up-and-coming, man-a-bout-town. Although, not in his actual life, Elizabeth Taylor plays Lady Patricia Belham, a woman of culture, breeding and social stature, who remains as elusive as Brummell's financial aspirations. Peter Ustinov plays the Prince of Wales and future King of England with convincing style and ease. Robert Morley, James Donald and James Hayter as Mortimer add to the fine cast as does Noel Willman who plays Lord Byron. As a result, this film may not exercise the accurate truth of the great Dandy of England, but does set the regal stage with which the real Beau Brummell was accustomed to. An excellent adaptation and recommended to all who wish to study the man, the times and the incredible influences he had in his day. ****

Giving up a military career when he is rude to the Prince of Wales, Stewart Granger is excellent as the handsome gentleman consumed with looking great and cavorting with upper class society in this elegant film.

Peter Ustinov is just marvelous as The Prince of Wales. Again and again, he shows that he was just born to play these majestic spots. Robert Morely is fabulous in the one scene that he appears in the film as the insane king.

The weak link here is Elizabeth Taylor. She seems like she is acting in 1944's "National Velvet."

The picture is a wonderful study of class values, snobbery and redemption in the end.

George Bryan Brummel (a stunning Stewart Granger) , a British military officer, loves Lady Patricia (Elizabeth Taylor who never looked more gorgeous under the loving gaze of the colour camera) , the betrothed of Lord Edwin Mercer (James Donald) . Despite her own desperate love for the scandalous Brummel, she submits to family pressure and marries Lord Alvanley. Brummel, broken-hearted, embarks upon a life of revelry. He befriends the Prince of Wales (unforgettable Peter Ustinov) and leaves the army, becoming subsequently the best-known rake and decider of fashion in Europe. As his affairs flourish, so does his disdain for his benefactor, the Prince. Eventually Brummel falls into disfavor, and it is only Lady Patricia who has any chance of helping him. Soldier, poet, adventurer, rogue, gambler, lover ! ...the Most Beautiful Romance in all History . Lover! Scoundrel! Adventurer! . Millions Know His Name, But This is the Flesh-and-Blood Man From M-G-M in Gorgeous Color. And thus was Beau Brummel's faith in love and women shattered. The turning point which changed a lovable youth into a sneering cynic who rode to success on a clotheshorse, whose only fortune was his fascination and whose fame lay in his follies.

Lavish production casts Stewart Granger in the character of the rags-to-riches dandy and chief adviser to the Prince of Wales well played by Peter Ustinov in his usual style . The latter reveals the Prince as a man not be laughed at , but sympathised with . Granger scores a great hit as the handsome dandy who works his way into the good graces of the Prince , son of the insane king George III and future George IV . Packing magnificent period piece cinematography by cameraman Oswald Morris , spectacular sets , great musical score by Richard Addinsell and glamurous costumes . The Regency atmosphere is wonderfully well caught in this agreeable portrait of the leader of fashion in his day , spendthrift and scoundrel . Shot on location in England's gorgeous countryside , many of the interior shots are from a 15th-century mansion , Ockwell mansion , located near Windsor Castle . It is a remake of the 1924 silent film by Harry Beaumont with John Barrymore . As George Bryon 'Beau' Brummel , Mary Astor Mary Astor , Willard Louis and Irene Rich.

The motion picture was professionally directed by Curtis Bernhardt . He was a Hollywood craftsman who worked in various Majors as Warner Bros and MGM, largely on the strength of Carrefour (1938) which proved so enduring that it was remade as Dead Man's Shoes (1940) in the UK and as Crossroads (1942). Bernhardt rapidly achieved a reputation as a woman's director with occasional forays into suspense with varied results and providing stunning casting in his impressive films . He directed one of Humphrey Bogart's least popular films, Conflict (1945). Soon after , he moved to RKO, which was entering its final chaotic decade, directing The Blue Veil (1951), a remake of a French film. He did a one-shot gig at Columbia, directing Bogie once again in the hopelessly set-bound Sirocco (1951) and this Beau Brummell (1954) that was one of the brilliant and convincing slices of history that MGM ever financed . Rating : 7/10 , better than average . This is a must-see for admirers of the Technicolor movies nearing its peak of perfection .

Stewart Granger, in his prime, was damned by being too handsome and too British. It is fascinating to see the way he was used in films in England in the late 1940s and films in Hollywood in the 1950s. His countrymen recognized he was good looking, and muscular, but while he could play an adventurous rug dealer in CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, it was a supporting part (the male lead was the less handsome looking, but greater actor, Claude Rains). In CAPTAIN BOYCOTT, he played an Irish farmer and horse racer (there the title character was a supporting character - played by Cecil Parker). In BLANCHE FURY he was a scheming murderer after an estate, based on the 19th Century killer James B. Rush. In THE MAN IN GREY he was one of a pair of doomed lovers (and the main role was a Regency buck villain played by James Mason, who in venting his anger on Margaret Leighton for her evil gained the audience's support). In short, Granger's English roles were a wide variety of types (they also included the violinist Paganini, and the unfortunate courtier Count Koenigsmarck). He had a wide variety of parts, and sometimes was not at the center of his films.

Hollywood was determined that he was at the center of the films. At his best (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, YOUNG BESS, SCARAMOUCHE) he was given good material, and good direction, and some humor (in SCARAMOUCHE anyway). But he was soon straight jacketed into costume films no matter how weak they were. Granger did occasionally break away from sword and leotard flicks, like ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALLIANT and THE LAST HUNT and (a little later) NORTH TO ALASKA - a welcome comic part. But most of his Hollywood films were like BEAU BRUMMEL and FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG: Weak stories with Granger pushed into British historical costumes.

BEAU BRUMMEL had been a play written at the turn of the century by America's leading dramatist of the day, Clyde Fitch. Forgotten (somewhat unjustly today), Fitch was usually a social comedy writer. His best known comic play (not revived for many decades) was a vehicle for a young actress named Ethel Barrymore called CAPTAIN JINKS OF THE HORSE MARINES. After watching Barrymore pursue the actor portraying Captain Adolphus Jinks (yes, that's his name) for two and a half hours, the play was so successful that Ethel added a line at the end to still the demands for encores: "That's all there is, there isn't anymore." Ironically, due to savage critics like Brooks Atkinson, Fitch's plays are rarely staged, so that final line is better remembered than it's play.

A number of years back (about 1986 or so) a group of female actors put together a review, called "The Club" (I believe that was the name). They were dressed in turn of the century clothing as male members of a club. Part of the review was a one act play of Fitch's. The critics felt it was quite well acted and even entertaining.

Fitch was known for historical dramas as well. He wrote one on NATHAN HALE. He also wrote this play, BEAU BRUMMEL, for Richard Mansfield. It is actually a study in a dandy's fall from "greatness" or social fame into tragedy. The real Brummell was to lose his social position, his fortune, his friendship with George, Prince of Wales ("Prinny" or "Florizel" - later George IV), and finally his sanity. The original play was grim. For an actor like Mansfield, who reveled in roles that emphasized opposites (the original "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde") he must have enjoyed going from plushy costumes to rags. The 1924 film version with John Barrymore as Brummel is closer to the original.

Brummel was a leader of social fashion. One of the Regency figures (including his "fat friend" the Prince) who created the style known as "Regency" that is for the period of 1795 to 1837. He influenced the Prince about wardrobe and social behavior - so much that George was called "The First Gentleman of Europe". But he had no political influence. He probably had no political ideas of importance at all.

The film tries to make him more important historically than he was. He was a fop who briefly influenced culture - but he did not confront William Pitt the Younger as this film suggests. In fact Prince George was not the best person to try to influence politically at all. Although in his youth he was frequently seen with Whig figures like Charles Fox (Peter Bull in the film) or Richard Sheridan, this was to spite his Tory father George III (Robert Morley in this film). If you saw that better historical film, THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE III, the poisonous relationship of the King and his heir was shown quite well. As Prince George grew older, his basic conservatism grew. By the time he was acting Prince Regent and then King (1811 - 1820; 1820 - 1830) he was firmly in the Tory ranks. But Pitt the Younger was dead by then.

As mentioned in another comment on this thread, Morley as the mad King, and Ustinov as the Prince (later King) were the best performers in this film. Poor Granger tries, but he has a terrible script to work with. They should have kept to the original - it might have been worth while as a film. For the sake of Ustinov and Morley I am giving this film a 6 out of 10.

George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (1778-1840) was a leader of fashion in Regency England and a close friend of the Prince Regent, although they eventually quarrelled. Brummell was eventually forced to leave Britain because of debts and spent the latter part of his life in poverty in France. He appears to have a considerable influence on the men's fashions of his day, helping to popularise cravats, trousers instead of knee-breeches, natural hair instead of wigs and to make fashionable the restrained, sober elegance which was to be the keynote of gentlemen's costume in the nineteenth century in place of the ostentatious dandyism of the eighteenth. Outside the field of gents' tailoring, however, he was not a figure of any great historical significance, so it is perhaps not surprising that this film is not an academically serious biopic, but rather a celebration of a colourful figure in a colourful age.

The film is far from being historically accurate, especially as regards chronology. The events depicted here (the Regency Crisis of 1788, the Prince's marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, Brummell's rise in the Prince's favour, his fall from grace, the death of King George III in 1820 and Brummel's own death in 1840) historically cover a period in excess of fifty years, but here they are presented as occurring over a much shorter timescale. Rather oddly, the villain of the piece is William Pitt the Younger, widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest Prime Ministers but presented here as a cunning, power-hungry schemer who refuses to allow King George III to be certified as mad (although he quite obviously is) in order to protect his own power. (The relationship between Pitt and the King depicted here more closely resembles that between the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich and the feeble-minded Emperor Ferdinand I who, for political reasons, was never declared to be insane). In reality Pitt died in 1806, but here he is shown as outliving not only George III but also Brummell.

The film's politics are, in fact, rather inconsistent. Early on, Brummell, whose family although wealthy are of fairly humble stock, is portrayed as something of a radical filled with the spirit of the French Revolution and complaining about the class divisions within British society. Later on, however, he becomes as the Prince's friend an arch-reactionary, encouraging the future George IV to defy Parliament and to rule more as an autocrat than as a constitutional monarch. Brummell's justification for this apparent change of heart is that he feels that the Prince will make an admirably liberal ruler, far more liberal than Pitt, but the character played by Peter Ustinov does not really make us feel that this confidence is well-founded.

Stewart Granger was known for playing dashing heroes in costume dramas, so was well-suited to the lead role, although it contains less in the way of physical action than some of his other parts from this period. Ustinov gives a good comic performance as the petulant, self-pitying Prince, and Robert Morley a more serious one as the mad old King. I was, however, surprised to see Elizabeth Taylor, already a major star in her early twenties, in a comparatively minor role. She plays Brummell's love-interest Lady Patricia Belham, although he eventually loses her to another man. Apparently Lady Patricia, a fictitious character not found in the play on which the screenplay was based, was inserted to allay any suspicions on the part of the ultra-puritanical American censors that the friendship between Brummell and the Prince might be homosexual in nature.

"Beau Brummell" is not the sort of film which is likely to please the historian, but then it was never intended to. It was clearly intended as an enjoyable period romp and, to some extent, still works on that level. 6/10