Jefferson in Paris
- Nick Nolte: Thomas Jefferson
- Greta Scacchi: Maria Cosway
- Jean -Pierre Aumont: D' Hancarville
- Gwyneth Paltrow: Patsy Jefferson
- Estelle Eoneth: Polly Jefferson
- Simon Callow: Richard Cosway
- Thandie Newton: Sally Hemmings
- James Earl Jones: Madison Hemmings
- Seth Gilliam: James Hemmings
- Michael Lonsdale: King Louis XVI.
- Charlotte de Turckheim: Marie Antoinette
- Elsa Zylberstein: Adrienne de Lafayette
- Lambert Wilson: Marquis de Lafayette
Jefferson in Paris is an American film drama from 1995 by director James Ivory. The film deals with the five years that spent the later U.S. president Thomas Jefferson as U.S. Ambassador in Paris.
Action
Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Ambassador to France, sympathized with the revolutionary movement. At the same time he is familiar with the manners and customs of the aristocratic layer, with which he is caught between both sides. Jefferson, just become a widower, Mary Conway gets to know, who is married to a British snob. The two fall in love, but their relationship must be kept secret.
Jefferson's daughter Patsy, who loves her father very much, is upset that she will attend a Catholic school Convention. Jefferson's younger daughter Polly comes along with the slave Sally in Paris. Sally is an attractive young woman who directs Jefferson's attention. Jefferson and Sally are friends. At the same time as Jefferson is called back to the United States, Jefferson Sally becomes pregnant and wants with her brother, who is also a slave in the house of Jefferson, stay in Paris. Jefferson wins the two for a return to Virginia, by promising them freedom and the future children of Sally. Patsy, who - even as a protest against the love affair between her father and Sally - had considered confront Catholic denomination is reminiscent of Jefferson mind that they will protrude in Virginia instead of the deceased mother 's house and there needed urgently.
Thus, the conflicts in the house Jefferson dissolve at the end of the film, which is all intended contrast to the revolutionary street fighting of the approaching French Revolution, the background against which the film is set.
In a frame narrative this story is, a journalist reported in 1831 by a son, who has emerged from the connection between Jefferson and Sally.
Background
- Producer Ismail Merchant has a cameo as an ambassador of a sultan.
- Other small roles were occupied prominent. So Vincent Cassel is seen as Camille Desmoulins.
Reviews
- Encyclopedia of the International film: " power off, long and ambiguous in relation to its protagonists, the film convinced neither as entertaining nor as a historical film portrait of a contradictory spirit. "