Joseph Bologne, better known as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was one of the first black classical composers, perhaps the greatest fencer of his generation, a court favorite in ancien régime France who became a revolutionary on two continents, and the commander of possibly the first nonwhite military division in European history.
His incredible biography could have made an incredible screenplay, and Searchlight Pictures agreed by greenlighting a biopic directed by Stephen Williams, but the writers deliberately confused the movie’s historical timeline, shoehorned his complex life into a trite romantic drama, and added plot points that never really happened to fit an anachronistic racial narrative.
Saint-Georges was a charming ladies’ man, a virtuoso violinist, and friends with luminous contemporaries ranging from Queen Marie Antoinette and Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans (later known as Philippe Égalité) to the composers Salieri, Gluck, and Grétry. He conducted operas and networked with early abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. French revolutionaries incarcerated him as a political dissident for 18 months.
Saint-Georges did all this in little more than 50 years of life, all while navigating his complicated racial identity, as he was born to a noble white planter father and an enslaved black mother in 1700s France.
Given the rich source material, this should have been a cinematic layup. Unfortunately, the film air-balled. For anyone familiar with his life’s genuine chronology, the errors destroyed the ability to suspend disbelief. And the contrived plot points cheapened the uniqueness of the chevalier’s actual story and its less-than-perfect end.
Spoilers ahead.
Inaccurate Chronology
The film’s first major issue was its puzzling chronology.
