Belle (2013) on Netflix
Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay is raised at Kenwood House by her great-uncle, the Lord Chief Justice. Her father's fortune makes her an heiress, but the family keeps her from society.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/1035,157 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay is born in the West Indies in 1761 to Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman, and Captain Sir John Lindsay of the Royal Navy. Her father takes her to England after Maria dies and places her with his uncle William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and Elizabeth, his wife, at Kenwood House. The Mansfields bring Dido up alongside their other great-niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray, as a free gentlewoman. When the cousins grow up, Dido's father dies and leaves her £2,000 a year, while Elizabeth will have no income. The Mansfields doubt any gentleman would take Dido as a wife because of her mixed race. Mansfield decides that Dido will accompany her cousin to London but will not be presented to society, and asks her to keep house for him instead.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Belle (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A Writers Guild of America arbitration ruled that Misan Sagay, who wrote the bulk of the script, should receive sole writing credit for Belle; cast members Penelope Wilton and Tom Wilkinson were incredulous, and Wilkinson said he only worked from a script written by Amma Asante.
- Belle was the first major British motion picture shot in true-4K, using Sony's F65 CineAlta digital production camera, and filming began on 24 September 2012 on location in the Isle of Man, Oxford and London.
- Lord Mansfield's closing line in Belle's Zong case ruling, that slavery is "so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it", was in history quoted by him eleven years earlier, in the Somerset v Stewart case.
- The film has Dido's mother dead, but the real Maria Belle was alive: she was 14 when Dido was conceived and 15 when she gave birth, and Sir John Lindsay later gave her property in Pensacola, Florida, where she purchased her freedom in 1774.
- Production designer Simon Bowles built the 18th-century Bristol Docks on the Isle of Man and a Kenwood House set for the film, modeling the house on a number of stately homes in the London area.
