CHEVALIER | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures
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Though his life and accomplishments were largely erased under Napoleon, the extraordinary figure at the center of Stephen Williams’ “Chevalier” really did exist. Born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the son of a white plantation owner and his Black slave, Joseph Bologne went on to excel in spheres rarely accessible to people of color in 18th-century French society. Here was a champion swordsman and celebrated musician invited to play his violin at Versailles, where Marie Antoinette reportedly accompanied him on the harpsichord.. . .In a shameful reversal of Enlightenment progress, three years after Bologne’s death, Napoleon reinstated slavery, and his work was banned.. . .Under the Code Noir, French society can never fully accept Bologne as one of its own,
The Code noir was a decree passed by King Louis XIV of France in 1685 defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire.
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