Belle !!!

This is the first time I've felt compelled to RAVE about one of the films I've chosen for the Movie Club. Some of us saw Belle yesterday and I still can't stop thinking about how wonderful it is - a treat for the eye, ear, heart and brain and a wonderful history lesson about something that led to what might be called the beginning of the end of slavery in Britain - all based on real events.

So if you haven't already seen Belle, this is my strong recommendation that you do so. Below is an outline of the plot plus a Wikipedia listing regarding the film's historical basis. As you'll see, Belle was inspired by this painting:

Plot: Dido Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy officer, is brought to England by her father and left in the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, at his estate of Kenwood House. Though the social mores of the time make her an outsider, Dido is raised by Mansfield as an aristocrat alongside her cousin Elizabeth. Dido's burgeoning relationship with a young lawyer, John Davinier, meets with the disapproval of Mansfield who considers the match beneath her. At the same time Mansfield is deliberating on a slavery case that will advance the cause of the Abolitionists.

The film is inspired by the 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle beside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray. Commissioned by William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the portrait of his two nieces hung in England's Kenwood House, until 1922. The painting,^[14] once thought to be by Zoffany and now attributed to an unknown artist, hangs at Scotland's Scone Palace. It was one of the first portraits to portray a black subject on an equal eye-line with a white aristocrat.

Very little is known about Dido Belle's life in the Mansfield home. The film centers on Dido's relationship with an aspiring young lawyer and is set at a time of legal significance as the potential ramifications of the Zong massacre become apparent. Lord Mansfield's ruling on this infamous case, in England's Court of King's Bench, became an important step in bringing an end to slavery in England.

--
     Terry