The Duchess

Well, I finally got to see The Duchess in theaters. I was quite surprised to see that the movie theaters in town actually got this film. There are many movies that we miss every year due to the disinterest of our local theaters. I will not claim to know what criteria the theaters use to gauge their audience’s interests, but apparently, Mobile’s interests lie in the blockbuster films.

I am not sure if The Duchess would be considered a ‘blockbuster’ in Mobile just by the sheer numbers in attendance. I was the first person in the theater for the movie and gradually….perhaps what you would call a snail’s pace, people started to show up for the movie. In the end, only twenty (including myself) people showed up! A young couple and I were the minority, i.e. under 60 crowd.

Judging from the reaction of the young couple, neither of them had read the biography and clearly, the girlfriend dragged her boyfriend against his will. My bookish heart hoped that at least the other 17 older individuals in the theater had read the biography like myself and were anticipating the film version of Georgiana’s life. How would the director/producers portray Amanda Foreman’s biography? Would they focus on Georgiana’s political involvement during the late 1700s? On the other hand, would they focus on her role in influencing the fashion of England? Or perhaps take the typical view of Hollywood and choose Georgiana’s gambling debts and rumors of her lesbianism to portray as her life’s main points and completely bypass her involvement in politics?

Instead of focusing on just one of those elements, they chose to portray all those points in some form during the course of the film. The director/producers main element was the love affair between Georgiana and Charles Grey. An element that I wouldn’t have chose to portray if it was my film to produce. While surely, the love affair between Georgiana and Charles was a great episode in her life, she wasn’t known only as Charles Grey’s lover, but an influential force in the world of the ton and politics.

Hopefully, I am not wrong on this point, but I think the author’s point in writing a biography on ‘yet another member of the upper classes’ in England was because Georgiana wasn’t just ‘another member’ of her class. She transcended her gender and class’ expectations for that time period. In truth, she wasn’t the only woman during that time to participate in politics, but she was by far the most successful of her contemporaries.

The influence of aristocratic women in politics would not be duplicated again until the 20th century. Women during the 19th century had little involvement in politics due to the attitudes of their male contemporaries. They considered a woman’s role in society to be that of the home and family. Georgiana and her contemporaries would have been a cautionary tale that politicians of the 19th century spoke of in hushed voices.

Despite the film’s producers taking the road of drama/romance with Amanda Foreman’s biography, I could enjoy the film as a stand-alone period piece (once I stopped checking the film against the biography in my mind!) with endless amounts of eye-candy in the form of gorgeous dresses, outrageous hairstyles, and historical settings!

Every art historian should see the film in order to see the costume designer’s reproduction of the Gainsborough hat. After seeing Georgiana’s portrait at Gainsborough, women flocked to their nearest millinery, desperate for what they called the ‘picture hat.’ Likewise, every historian should see the film for something I thought was priceless: the Duchess of Devonshire and Charles Grey lying in bed, reading a newspaper in Bath and commenting on the illustrations that were mocking Georgiana’s role in politics!

What can I say about the historical settings besides beautiful? One of the Duke of Devonshire’s residences was a magnificent estate called Chatsworth in Derbyshire; it is shown in the film. Just the word ‘Chatsworth’ makes me giddy. One of my local museums in town had an exhibition on Chatsworth and its collection of artifacts. It was breathtaking; I saw it twice!

While I was in England, I did not have a chance to visit Chatsworth. I was taking courses at the time and a weekend trip to Chatsworth was a bit of a hassle with finding a good time to take a train from Egham to London and then on to Chatsworth. While you could probably see all of it in a day once you arrive (assuming you’ve spent the insane amount of money on an early train to get there), it makes more sense to stay a day or two in order to really take in the experience of the estate and the town. Needless to say, I promised myself that when I go back to England in the future I would make arrangements to stay in Chatsworth for a couple of days.

With its vast amounts of historical eye-candy, is The Duchess worthy as a period drama? Can you watch the film without having read the biography? Yes, to both questions. I am rarely disappointed by the creative team at BBC films. If you like your period dramas with star-crossed lovers, an evil tyrannical husband, massive amounts of historical eye-candy, and a not so-conventional ending you have come to the right theater for a movie!