Stewart Granger is George "Beau" Brummel, former Captain of Dragoons, who strikes up a friendship with the future King of England, the Prince of Wales, Peter Ustinov. Under Ustinov's imprimatur, Granger makes all sorts of friends and enemies in high places, including George Gordon, Lord Byron, advises the Prince on issues of politics and character, and, most important, changes the fashion of the nation from powdered wigs, white stockings, and elaborate dress, to understated black clothing with ordinary trousers.
Granger and Elizabeth Taylor fall for each other but Taylor opts for marriage to the stolid James Donald rather than the dashing but erratic Granger who is making a living by gambling and has piled up a mountain of debts. Eventually, Granger not being willing or able to come to the mountain, the mountain comes to Granger -- at about the same time Granger's pip-pip advice to the Prince becomes too frank. Granger flees to France where he dies in poverty.
It's not what you think of when you think of a Stewart Granger movie. He was the Errol Flynn of the 1950s. His best-known films involved swashbuckling, pursuits on horseback, that sort of thing. This movie is not like that. It's duller and, in a way, more adult.
Granger here is a complex man and although the audience is invariably going to root for him -- he IS, after all, Stewart Granger -- he has quite a few flaws. It could even be argued that he is made up of nothing BUT flaws. Despite the fact that the movie does its best to paper over them, the artifice shows and the cracks are visible.
My God, what a narcissist. He's self indulgent, full of rude Wildeian quips, snooty and insolent, manipulative, and reckless with the feelings of others. The Elizabeth Taylor character was invented to assure us that Beau Brummel was heterosexual but I don't know.
I don't know that Granger himself is any more manipulative than the movie. Okay, he's an adviser to the Prince on politics. What are his politics like? The film introduces them by having Granger make a few indignant remarks about the high-flown ways of the aristocracy. Why, take the flour that those aristos put into their wigs! Enough to feed fifty million families on bread for ten million years! Very populist.
And that's the end of his interest in people blessed with less opportunity than himself. Thereafter he urges the Prince to exert his power and, at the final confrontation, not to accept any compromise with parliament regarding the bestowing of earldoms. (Ustinov had promised to make Granger an earl.) Is Granger as Brummel simply using Ustinov as the Prince to advance his own interests? Granger muses to himself -- and to Mortimer, the servant who polishes his boots with champagne -- that it may have started off that way but now Granger realizes that the Prince needs his friendship as much as he, Granger, needs the Prince's. Right-o, Beau. That kind of reasoning is known as an ego defense mechanism.
Granger is extremely handsome, dressed to the nines, and strides around with pomp and character. But Peter Ustinov is equally good in a secondary role -- a pouting, blushing, pink little porker. Ustinov convinces us that he's filled with self doubt and hesitancy, as much as Granger so skillfully plays the role of the self-confident sociopath.
We all wind up rooting for Granger, yes, but we probably won't cheer so loudly if we pay attention to the goings on. Kids may miss the action of Stewart's other films of the period. Adults may be able to get into the intrigue and the intricacies of personal motives. They may also appreciate Elizabeth Taylor at her most gaspingly stunning.
Granger and Elizabeth Taylor fall for each other but Taylor opts for marriage to the stolid James Donald rather than the dashing but erratic Granger who is making a living by gambling and has piled up a mountain of debts. Eventually, Granger not being willing or able to come to the mountain, the mountain comes to Granger -- at about the same time Granger's pip-pip advice to the Prince becomes too frank. Granger flees to France where he dies in poverty.
It's not what you think of when you think of a Stewart Granger movie. He was the Errol Flynn of the 1950s. His best-known films involved swashbuckling, pursuits on horseback, that sort of thing. This movie is not like that. It's duller and, in a way, more adult.
Granger here is a complex man and although the audience is invariably going to root for him -- he IS, after all, Stewart Granger -- he has quite a few flaws. It could even be argued that he is made up of nothing BUT flaws. Despite the fact that the movie does its best to paper over them, the artifice shows and the cracks are visible.
My God, what a narcissist. He's self indulgent, full of rude Wildeian quips, snooty and insolent, manipulative, and reckless with the feelings of others. The Elizabeth Taylor character was invented to assure us that Beau Brummel was heterosexual but I don't know.
I don't know that Granger himself is any more manipulative than the movie. Okay, he's an adviser to the Prince on politics. What are his politics like? The film introduces them by having Granger make a few indignant remarks about the high-flown ways of the aristocracy. Why, take the flour that those aristos put into their wigs! Enough to feed fifty million families on bread for ten million years! Very populist.
And that's the end of his interest in people blessed with less opportunity than himself. Thereafter he urges the Prince to exert his power and, at the final confrontation, not to accept any compromise with parliament regarding the bestowing of earldoms. (Ustinov had promised to make Granger an earl.) Is Granger as Brummel simply using Ustinov as the Prince to advance his own interests? Granger muses to himself -- and to Mortimer, the servant who polishes his boots with champagne -- that it may have started off that way but now Granger realizes that the Prince needs his friendship as much as he, Granger, needs the Prince's. Right-o, Beau. That kind of reasoning is known as an ego defense mechanism.
Granger is extremely handsome, dressed to the nines, and strides around with pomp and character. But Peter Ustinov is equally good in a secondary role -- a pouting, blushing, pink little porker. Ustinov convinces us that he's filled with self doubt and hesitancy, as much as Granger so skillfully plays the role of the self-confident sociopath.
We all wind up rooting for Granger, yes, but we probably won't cheer so loudly if we pay attention to the goings on. Kids may miss the action of Stewart's other films of the period. Adults may be able to get into the intrigue and the intricacies of personal motives. They may also appreciate Elizabeth Taylor at her most gaspingly stunning.