Period drama’s narrow focus on telling and re-telling the same stories has, historically at least, deprived audiences of some rip-roaring screen fare. That’s now changing, as evidenced by this film about 18th-century Parisian polymath Joseph Bologne AKA Chevalier de Saint-Georges. As played by Kelvin Harrison Jr, this fascinating fellow escaped a Caribbean slave plantation – his mother was a Senegalese-African woman; his father her enslaver – to reach the highest echelons of French society. There he excelled as a champion fencer, composer and virtuoso violinist, described by US founding father John Adams as “the most accomplished man in Europe”.
Screenwriter Stefani Robinson and director Stephen Williams have now brought his story to the screen, beginning with an impressive scene in which Bologne upstages Mozart at his own concert by challenging him to a musical duel: F Murray Abraham’s Salieri would have loved to see it! Their weapon is the violin, but the most essential element in Bologne’s armoury – and perhaps that of any Black artist – is his unassailable self-confidence. That genuine talent is the basis for this, and it is also persuasively demonstrated in the on-camera arrangements by Michael Abels, which incorporate Bologne’s own concertos with some interesting speculation on the musical influence of his Afro-Caribbean heritage.
Chevalier isn’t the only period drama to centre a person of colour, but while the likes of Bridgerton or the Dev Patel-starring David Copperfield enliven otherwise familiar material with audacious casting choices, this represents a more fundamental, story-level shift. Like Amma Asante’s Belle from 2013, Chevalier retrieves an extraordinary Black life from historical obscurity and deems it biopic-worthy.
That means acknowledging the harsh reality of racism, for sure, but not necessarily forgoing the genre’s frothier, escapist pleasures. As Bologne flits from party to party, supping champagne and seducing married women, we enjoy elements of a Dangerous Liaisons-style courtly intrigue, alongside a backstage musical (complete with audition montages), and a historical primer on the French Revolution. And while Harrison’s performance may never fully reveal the nature of the man beneath these sumptuous layers of organza, silk and self-confidence, it’s enchanté Chevalier, all the same.
• Chevalier is released on 9 June in UK and Irish cinemas.
