Miláček – de Maupassant Guy (2022)

Paris 1885: Georges Duroy, a former soldier and currently an employee on the railway, is troubled by a lack of money, poverty, and helplessness. Everything changes overnight when a friend from the army gets him a job at a newspaper – the nobody becomes a respected journalist. Through acquaintances, Duroy, nicknamed Bel Ami, meets a few wealthy socialites from the local elite and gains his first mistress, Madame de Marelle. However, he soon marries purely out of calculation – he does not take the one he loves, but a rich widow of a friend. With the wedding, he also chooses a new, more noble name, and with status and money, his demands grow. The satirical novel has a great atmosphere that takes us back to a time when the social elite rode in carriages and a peasant could become the darling of salons. Maupassant presents a selfish and self-centered individual who longs for fame, recognition, power, money, and success with women. Bel Ami is an incurable womanizer, a prototype of the average person who steps over corpses.