The Captivating Trailer for 'Chevalier' Highlights a Lesser Known Genius
One of the best things about historical dramas is that they are uniquely capable of introducing modern-day audiences to stories they don't know. Sure, some of them retread the same ground regarding setting and characters. (Love you, Anne Boleyn, but Henry VIII did have five other wives!) But every so often, you get a story that aims to shake things up regarding how we remember specific historical eras and the people who lived in them.
These shakeups often come when audiences are asked to consider stories of marginalized people in historical periods. That's where films like Chevalier come in, a movie that not only aims to bring the story of a man whose story is not widely known to light but that works to shift our understanding of the period in which he lived.
The film is based on the real-life story of Joseph Bologne, the illegitimate son of an enslaved African and a French plantation owner, who would become Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Born in the 18th-century French colony of Guadeloupe and sent to Paris at age seven, he was a musical prodigy who rose to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist, composter, and fencer, even appeared onstage with Mozart at one point.
