The big-screen adaptation of “Brideshead Revisited” opens July 25 in the US. “The Passionate Spectator” columnist Robert Sacheli recently attended a press screening. The following are his thoughts on the film, as well as the charges of sacrilege leveled by fans of the 1981 Granada Television version.

Outrage against cultural debasement becomes a dandy as much as a good pair of white summer flannels, but the new film adaptation of “Brideshead Revisited” has stirred up a level of feverish emotion ill suiting the man of bemused detachment.

Why has the film hit so many exquisitely sensitive nerves? Perhaps because revisiting “Brideshead” in 2008 is less a threat to the cultural legacies of Evelyn Waugh or Granada Television than it is to our own memories of the 1981 series and the role it holds in our lives.

My own sacred and sometimes profanely silly “Brideshead” connections reach back to high school. Despite the questionable erotic themes — and possibly more problematic, the Jesuit bias — the Brothers of Holy Cross judged “Brideshead Revisited” to merit a place on our summer reading list as we headed into junior year. I’m now deeply ashamed that a hasty late-August skim through the novel left no lasting impression except for its cover illustration, a floridly rendered version of the Brideshead fountain with a pair of male and female figures ominously dwarfed by its sculptural glories.

The now-legendary television series, though, was quite another story. I was as guilty of being a “Brideshead”-head as the next impressionable fellow in the early ’80s. I had an English friend record my answering machine greeting with the series theme swelling in the background. Spellings such as “emphasised” spilled from my fountain pen. I admit to have spoken the phrases “unused to wine” and “would your friend care to rumba?” in actual conversations.

In short, I joined a brotherhood of millions who happily fell for a seductive vision of inter-war England as filtered through the lens of Thatcherism. With that memorable baroque trumpet theme echoing in our imaginations, we daydreamed about cricket sweaters, plover’s eggs, and perpetually indulgent nannies.

Yes, we thought, this is when and how we deserved to have lived.

Burnished in our affection by repeated DVD marathons, “Brideshead” was a comforting return to our youth — or at least the imaginary version we’d assembled from Waugh’s seductive characters and the glow of high-level art direction.

So it’s understandable that there might be reluctance towards Brideshead II. Better to boycott the local cineplex with a wearily dismissive attitude.

Sorry to spoil your fun, but this version of “Brideshead” is neither a desecration nor a disaster. Rather it’s a refocused approach to the novel’s story and characters — a necessary step when adapting any work of literature for the screen.

A handful of the changes wrung on it by director Julian Jarrold and screenwriters Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock may come off as questionable or overstated, but it’s a generally reverent and respectable piece of work, and it’s unfailingly handsomely designed and shot. Think of the television series as grand opera and the film as chamber music, a set of more intimately scaled variations on a heroic theme.

The most astute choice on the part of the moviemakers was casting several major characters with performers far removed physically and temperamentally from their TV-series counterparts. Dark-haired Hayley Atwell has a ripe physicality that makes Julia’s allure both softly flirtatious and aggressively direct. Julia Quick had the luxury of gradually unveiling the passion simmering just below her character’s silken, aristocratic reserve; Artwell’s flapper hasn’t the time for coyness.

Ben Wishaw is dark, slight and nearly elfin, not a golden boy like Anthony Andrews. His fragile, floppy-haired Sebastian comes off as far more damaged by his inherited and self-inflicted demons. Though perhaps less interesting in the earlier parts of the story, it’s an interpretation that pays off later. Where Andrews crumbled into a grandly wrecked wastrel, Wishaw conveys a moving near-serenity in his final exile among the Moroccan monks.

Matthew Goode has the right opacity for the initially wide-eyed Charles, and though his voiceovers often recall the controlled cadences of Jeremy Irons, he taps into a deeper vein of sensuality than his predecessor. The film’s rumored emphasis on homoeroticism turns out to be a few playful bathroom shots and a rather decorative kiss; fans expecting a threeway with Aloysius will be disappointed.

Jonathan Cake (a more perfect Waugh name would be hard to imagine) makes Rex less a bumbling provincial than a man who pointedly deploys his energetic vulgarity against an aristocracy he’ll usurp with his money and ambition.

The wonderfully pompous Boy Mulcaster appears in a single scene at Sebastian’s Oxford luncheon party. Joseph Beattie’s Anthony Blanche frustratingly flits out of the action for great stretches (and, oddly, is assigned to deliver a variation on the famous “twitch upon the thread” line). Ed Stoppard brings an appropriate young fogeyish stiffness to Lord Brideshead, though we’re never allowed to see much beyond that single dimension. We do get a brief, hilariously telling glimpse of Bridey’s humble matchbox collection amid the baronial bric-a-brac.

The screenplay finds its focus in the sins committed in the guise of familial love, and it’s the players who portray the older generation who come to dominate the movie. Emma Thompson, wearing her steel-gray hair as if it were a royal tiara, suggests a note of desperation beneath Lady Marchmain’s armor of piety and manipulativeness. Michael Gambon taps into the veiled Byronic swagger that Waugh ascribes to Lord Marchmain’s appetites and anger. Instead of Gielgud’s delightful old loon, Patrick Malahide brings out the malevolence in Ned Ryder’s obliviousness, underscoring the emotional lure of the Marchmain clan for poor Charles.

Will some viewers be disappointed that this is not their cherished vision of “Brideshead”? Certainly. But then again, the strength of that that personal vision certainly ought to endure assaults more egregious than a commercial film.

As for me, I finally made it to Brideshead. My pilgrimage to Castle Howard took place more than a decade after I’d first seen the series, and though it was my first visit it had a the feeling of a return. The rooms, the art and the grounds — particularly the fountain — were suitably impressive when liberated from the proportions of a television screen. But part of me was strangely let down. I expected a gift shop stocked with Fair Isle pullovers and antique stud boxes. I found teddy-bear key chains, refrigerator magnets and frisbees. In the end, it didn’t matter. I still had my memories of “Brideshead,” distilled as they were through Evelyn Waugh and Charles Ryder and Jeremy Irons.

But now I had my own remembrance of the place to add to them. I also had something more, a powerful talisman of memory that neither the story’s author nor his characters could have imagined.

I had the refrigerator magnet.

If filmmaker Catherine Breillat could be anyone in the world, she’d be the man pictured at left. Yes, the guy who looks like Lemmy from Motorhead dressed for the Dickens Fair.

“I have always said that if I had been born in a different century, I would have been Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly,” says the director of “The Last Mistress,” which opened in the US last week.

The film, which is loosely based on a novel by d’Aurevilly, centers around Ryno de Marigny, a proud libertine and gambler who strolls through life with his “hands in his pockets and nose in the air.”

The film stars prettyboy newcomer and Angelina Jolie lookalike (emphasis on jolie) Fu’ad Ait Aattou, who had never acted before and who therefore gives off the requisite air of dandy detachment.

Asia Argento, daughter of Italian horror film legend Dario Argento, is the film’s leading lady and a classic belle-laide.

Fans of Barbey’s fiction will enjoy a long sequence in the heart of the film that makes use of his favorite literary device, the recit parlé, or spoken narrative. Breillat’s adaptation also preserves the themes of mystery, revenge, passion and death that permeate all the work of Barbey, who was born in the sign of Scorpio and shares the sign’s preoccupations to the highest degree.

The press kit for the film includes the following remarks from Breillat:

On discovering the book Une Vieille Maitresse: I enjoyed the dandyism, a last shout from the aristocracy. Just like the Marquise de Flers, I am “absolutely 18th century.” The 18th century was more elegant and open-minded than the 19th, when the middle classes came into power, bringing narrow-mindedness and rigorously strict moral principles.

I also loved all these highly androgynous characters. Ryno is a terrible womanizer, a sort of Valmont (DANGEROUS LIAISONS), but he is also, like many dandies, deeply feminine. I’ve often dreamt about Michelangelo and the “Portrait of a Young Man” by Lorenzo Lotto (which is also in the film), about these men of dazzling beauty, a certain feminine beauty, yet without being effeminate.

The story could only take place in an aristocratic environment. When struggling to survive, feeding a family and finding a room for shelter, there is no time for the leisure of romance. Not enough time to experience the pureness. Sentiment can only be expressed in a certain level of comfort where it is not tainted by the harsh realities of life. The way many great authors of that era expressed strong feeling in such idealistic settings has always fascinated me. Aristocracy simply lends itself to the refinery of sentiments.

“Like the Duke of Windsor, late 20th-century punks and early 21st-century gentlemen are, in very different ways, inheritors of the tradition of Brummellian dandyism, the former through their political posturings and the latter through their sartorial sublimity. For, in spite of, or rather because of its exquisite propriety, Brummell’s self-presentation was, fundamentally, oppositional, an anti-fashion statement that mocked the sartorial superiority of the aristocracy and the sartorial mediocrity of the bourgeoisie. In essence, Brummell was a punk disguised as a gentleman.” — Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in “Anglomania.”

Dandies who don’t have their fortunes tied up in the three-percents will want to fork over $15 for the July/August issue of Italy’s L’Uomo Vogue. With many articles on dandyism, the issue is sure to sell out and appreciate in value. Indeed, copies are already on e-Bay for the exploitation of dandies in Australia and Japan.

What’s sure to make the issue a collector’s item isn’t the article by the redoubtable Nick Foulkes — author of the recent d’Orsay biography — on who is and isn’t a dandy. Nor is it the piece on “dandy cars,” nor the fluff piece on the renaissance of the pocket watch. And it certainly isn’t the photo spread of Robert Downey Jr. cavorting variously in top hat, bowler, frock coat, cravat and monocle.

No, the issue will be a sound investment because it includes the best article we’ve ever seen in print about dandyism and the Internet, entitled, with typical European flair, “Dandyland’s STARS in the DIGITAL Era.”

The article was written by D.net’s own Chensvold & Willard, who have become the Rodgers & Hart of dandy journalism for their dry and conceited style, as evidenced in the very words you’re reading now.

Intended for a general audience uninitiated into the mysteries of Dandyland, the article opens with a uncharacteristically modest mention of Dandyism.net, then goes on to discuss Winston Chesterfield and Andrea Sperelli (who faced off in a “Who’s the Dandy?” post), Doran Wittelsbach, John Dodelande and Lord Whimsy. Dickon Edwards, who doesn’t typically pontificate on dandyism itself but who is a fine example of a dandy rocker, was also included.

In the interest of diplomacy, Chensvold and Willard suggested that their editor make the photo requests, since if certain parties knew the story was written by the “charmless entitled jerks” of D.net, they would be unlikely to comply, despite assurances of the article’s neutrality, or at least quasi-neutrality.

Curiously, we know from the blogosphere that Sperelli was asked to provide a photo, but his absence in the photo spread (and despite his being a fellow Italian) is either due to his unwillingness to condescend to the request of a vulgar fashion magazine, or because the L’Uomo Vogue staff didn’t think he looked elegant enough. Or because he found out the article was written by Chensvold & Willard.
The vainest of all, however, was our very own Chenners, who did not have a recent photo handy, as he’s never been asked to submit a picture to illustrate one of his own articles, and so blew his 60 percent share of the writer’s fee on a photographer.

Willard, on the other hand, took his share of the fee and hired a limousine and two lady escorts, traveled to Atlantic City, placed what was left on black, lost, then calmly left the casino, got back in the limousine, and went home.

Below is a scan of the article in Chensvold and Willard’s somewhat clumsy Italian. For the benefit of English-speaking readers, a translation follows.

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Catherine Breillat’s “The Last Mistress” opens today in New York.

An official selection at the Cannes Film Festival last year, the movie is based on dandy scribe Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1851 novel “Une vieille maitresse.”

Director Breillat is known for sexually provocative films such as “Romance,” for which she hired Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi to penetrate her leading lady. In “The Last Mistress,” the principals were only asked to simulate lovemaking.

Released by IFC, the film will hit Los Angeles next week, followed by a gradual nationwide rollout.

Click here for the Village Voice review.

Saith the IFC in a release:

THE LAST MISTRESS is a smoldering adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 19th-century novel. Set during the reign of “citizen king” Louis Philippe, it chronicles the surprising betrothal of the handsome, aristocratic, former libertine Ryno de Marigny (newcomer Fu-ad Aît Aattou) to Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida of FAT GIRL), a lovely, young and virginal aristocrat.

Lurking in the margins – and in the imaginations of high society’s gossip-hounds – is de Marigny’s older, tempestuous lover of ten years, the feral La Vellini (Argento). Described as “a capricious flamenca who can outstare the sun,” La Vellini still burns for de Marigny, and she will not go quietly.

Here’s the trailer:

In 1844, at the height of his fame, Count Alfred d’Orsay found himself lampooned in print. Writing under the pen name A Man of Fashion, popular novelist John Mills published “D’Horsay: Or the Follies of the Day.” The whiff of scandal that ensued did little to obviate d’Orsay’s demand in society, perhaps because it failed to address the Count’s apparent seducing of wife, husband and daughter in the Blessington family.

However, the book was immediately suppressed for its attacks on prominent men of the day, who are depicted engaging in various acts of questionable morality.

“D’Horsay” is as tiresome and dated as one would expect, but we have excerpted a few descriptive passages for their historical value, as they show how the second-greatest dandy of all time was viewed in the diabolical monocle of a contemporary satirist.

Some descriptions are of the character D’Horsay, while others are of his sycophantic imitators. The great dandy caricaturist George Cruikshank supplied the drawing at left.

* * *

D’Horsay, or the Follies of the Day
by A Man of Fashion (John Mills), 1844

In the lower room of this house of counterfeit show, sat, or rather lounged, a leader of the votaries of pleasure. The Marquis D’Horsay was, indeed, “the glass of fashion, and the mold of form.”

From the color and tie of the kerchief which adorned his neck to the spurs ornamenting the heels of his patent boots, he was the original for countless copyists, particularly and collectively.

Even the brow which the ducal coronet occasionally pressed was proud to wear the hat imitated from the model, which every aspiring Tittlebat Titmouse of the age strove to copy in his gossamer. The hue and cut of his many faultless coats, the turn of his closely-fitting inexpressibles, the shade of his gloves, the knot of his scarf, were studied by the motley multitude with greater interest and avidity than objects more profitable and worthy of their regard, perchance, could possibly hope to obtain. Nor did the beard that flourished luxuriantly upon the delicate and nicely chiseled features of the Marquis escape the universal imitation.

Those who could not cultivate their scanty crops into the desirable arrangement had recourse to art and stratagem to supply the natural deficiency. Atkinson and Rowland revelled in the attempts. From the extreme east to the far west ends of London, lights and shadows of the Marquis were plentiful as daisies in merry May. Wristbands, both false and real, were turned over cuffs of every dye and texture, and, in short, from the most essential article of the modish lion’s dress to the most trifling, not an item was left confined to its pristine state of originality. Continue »

Dandyland is buzzing with cynicism over the imminent release of the big-screen version of “Brideshead Revisited,” which opens August 1 in select U.S. theaters.

The production has stirred controversy since its announcement. For starters, why bother? The 1981 Granada TV Production featuring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews — plus bit players like Sir Lawrence Olivier as Papa Marchmain and Sir John Gielgud as Pater Ryder — has captivated audiences with its elegiac splendor and 11½-hour exposition of the novel.

The new adaptation immediately hit snags. The original director and cast, including Jude Law, abandoned the project for various reasons. Production finally started after a delay of nearly three years.

Then horrible rumors leaked out about what was being done to Waugh’s novel.

The Independent summarized the “remarkable differences” between the novel and new version. These include an apparently incestuous relationship between Sebastian and Julia which Charles ultimately joins; Lady Marchmain’s encouragement of Julia’s marriage to Rex, a Protestant; an innuendo that Lord Marchmain buggers his children (at least the good looking ones); and the intensification of Charles and Sebastian’s relationship from mildly homoerotic to outright homosexual.

And most troubling, there have been conflicting reports of whether Aloysius, Sebastian’s teddy bear, wound up on the cutting room floor or merely peed on it.

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Dedalus Books, publishers of such dandy classics as “The She-Devils” by Barbey d’Aurevilly and “Monsieur de Phocas” by Jean Lorrain, has put out a new edition of J.-K. Huysmans’ seminal work of French Decadence, “Against Nature.”

Released last week in the UK and this week in the US, the book features a new translation, introduction, bibliography in English, the celebrated preface by Huysmans written 20 years later, and extensive notes on the author’s obscure historical and cultural references.

It also features as a cover image a self-portrait by Egon Schiele looking like a LiveJournal blogger.

“‘Against Nature’ will be Dedalus’s seventh Huysmans title and the fourth book to be translated by Brendan King,” Dedalus founder Eric Lane told Dandyism.net. “Our edition will be the definitive edition of ‘Against Nature’ for the next 30 years. A classic text benefits from having new translations to keep it alive. It also reinforces its importance and reminds people that it is a book for today as yet another new translation has appeared.”

Below is an interview with Brendan King, a Paris-based writer and translator who recently completed his Ph.D. on Huysmans, and who runs the site Huysmans.org. Following that is a sample of King’s translation, including the “sermon on dandyism” passage in which Des Esseintes, the book’s hero, looks back on the sartorial follies of his youth.

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June 1, 2004 is a day that will forever live in dandy infamy: The debut of Dandyism.net. This year “The Passionate Spectator” columnist Robert Sacheli smugly looks back on the latest year that was.

Membership in the Junta is not unlike being part of the French Resistance. We wage noble campaigns against massed forces of philistinism. For strategic efficiency and mutual protection, we operate from separate geographic bases. We also take frequent cigarette breaks.

In addition, we’re always advancing on new territories. Dandyism.net’s fourth anniversary marks a year of widening global influence. If life were a black-and-white ’40s movie — a happenstance most of us would relish — you’d see our expanding reach portrayed on a map with pulsing arcs radiating from D.net’s central command to far-flung and exotic locales.

Forum members now reside in Slovenia and Jamaica, Bogotá and Warsaw, Madrid and Melbourne, Helsinki and Erie, Pennsylvania. After bouts of intensive bicoastal socializing with Michael and me, Ryan Wittingslow of Sydney became our first antipodean intern.

D.net (the abbreviation is also new) has spawned copycats in such hotbeds of dandyism as Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Northern California. The Junta a parlé en français for our interview for John Dodelande’s Paris-based blog. In December, Shiny Media of London dubbed us one of the top ten men’s style sites in the world.

We also became provocateurs sans frontiers. Crowning Lapo Elkann 2007’s Dandy of the Year unleashed a torrent of multilingual abuse, huzzahs, and suspicions of our sanity. We now know the word for “idiot” in five languages.

Recurring new feature “Who’s the Dandy?” pitted gents from Milan, Paris, Manhattan and London in sartorial cage matches, causing partisans on both sides of the digital divide to fling down primrose gloves. All this operatic emotion over grooming, pocket squares, suit cuts, and dalliances with transsexual hookers — that, faithful myrmidons, is what we call entertainment.

Our relentless campaign of self-promotion was capped by the news D.net had won the inaugural Fabbie Award as Best Men’s Fashion blog. Since the nominees were announced, the Junta’s editorial meetings had focused on whether caring about the award runs contrary to the nonchalant code of the dandy. Now that the semi-glittering prize is ours, we realize those hours could have been better spent on developing D.net’s signature articles, such as “Pukka Up,” my forthcoming look at seersucker dinner jackets and the culture of empire during the sunset of the Raj.

There is no need to worry that these multilingual accolades will lead us to rest our spectators on our mahogany desks. We were self-satisfied when we began this journey four years ago. Under Christian’s and Nick’s leadership, we pledge to continue the fight against philistinism until all men — but only men — have the freedom to proclaim, in the language of their choice, “Je suis un dandy.”

That, brave comrades, is the anniversary message the Junta wants to convey.

Following hard upon Robert Sacheli’s three-part biography on Lucius Beebe, D.net founder Christian M. Chensvold has written an article on chartering vintage railcars — including Beebe’s Virginia City — for the online magazine at RalphLauren.com.

“Beebe hired Hollywood decorator Robert Hanley to select a crystal chandelier, 17th-century clock, red silk curtains, and working fireplace in a decorating scheme commonly referred to as Venetian Renaissance baroque, though some find ‘Barbary Coast bordello’ more accurate,” writes Chensvold.

“Pellizzer [the car’s current owner] has preserved the car’s original decor as much as possible. ‘I think it’s the best car out there because of its history,’ he says. ‘And it’s certainly the most gaudy, ostentatious, and over-the-top.’”

Under a tight deadline, Chensvold was unable to ride aboard the railcar, though the current owner has promised him its future use.

In fact, at this very moment the Junta is planning a cross-country goodwill tour aboard the Virginia City.