Bel-Ami from the Page to Film: Notes on the First Transposition of Maupassant's Novel to the Screen

The following essay aims to critically discuss the first transposition of Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami to the screen by Austrian film director Willi Forst at the end of the 1930s. Forst’s film preceded by a decade Hollywood’s version The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, of 1947, with George Sanders as Bel-Ami, while Maupassant’s novel was first brought to the screen in France by Louis Daquin in the 1950s. Yet Forst’s film has been paid but scarce attention in scholarly studies on the cinematic adaptations of Maupassant’s work. In discussing Forst’s film, the present essay will specifically examine Forst’s work in its relation to Maupassant’s novel. In particular, attention will be focused on the metamorphosis of the character of Bel-Ami on the screen in comparison to the novel, and Forst’s film shall simultaneously be analyzed in the context of Forst’s oeuvre. By drawing attention to the first film to be adapted from Maupassant’s world-famous novel, this essay aims to fill a gap in scholarly literature on the relationship between the French novelist and cinema.