The Private Affairs of Bel Ami features a cast of Academy Award winning & nominated actors led by George Sanders (Best Supporting Actor winner, All About Eve), Angela Lansbury (three Best Supporting Actress nominations for her work in Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate) and Albert Basserman (Best Supporting Actor nominee for Foreign Correspondent).
George Sanders (All About Eve) is at his wicked best in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, based on the novel Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant and directed by Albert Lewin (The Picture of Dorian Gray).
The opportunistic, womanizing Parisian journalist, Georges Duroy (Sanders), known to the women who love him as "Bel Ami," uses his charms to climb the ladder of Paris society while discarding those whose usefulness has run its course. Using those around him to further his aspirations, Georges will find in his friend and former fellow soldier, Charles Forestier (John Carradine, The Grapes of Wrath) a benefactor whose kindness he'll reward with betrayal.
The women who travel in and out of Georges's life include Charles's wife, Madeleine (Ann Dvorak, Flame of Barbary Coast), the beautiful and blinded-by-love Clotilde de Marelle (Angela Lansbury, The Picture of Dorian Gray) and the lovely young heiress Suzanne Walter (Susan Douglas, The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick).
Director Lewin (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman) weaves a compelling tale of love and deception in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, co-starring Warren William (Strange Illusion), Frances Dee (Mister Scoutmaster), Hugo Haas (King Solomon's Mines), Albert Bassermann (Foreign Correspondent) in a film photographed in silky black & white tones by Academy Award winner Russell Metty (Spartacus).