It also doesn't mean that parts of The Champagne Safari weren't staged. But they weren't staged by George Ungar, its director. They were staged by Charles Bedaux (1886-1944), its subject. This self-made man, who built a lucrative business around streamlining industries and, with his fortune, built himself into an international socialite, had many indulgences, one of which was the globetrotting expeditions he took with his wife, Fern. With an unflinching eye towards public relations, Bedaux hired Hollywood cinematographer Floyd Crosby (Tabu, High Noon) to capture one of those expeditions, a 1934 trek from Edmonton, Alberta to Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, for a film Bedaux himself would direct.
Like the expedition, the film was never completed, but the long-unseen footage shot for it provides the backbone of The Champagne Safari. With the instant glimpse into the past the footage provides, Ungar chronicles the expedition as he chronicles Bedaux's life. It turns out the two share many qualities.
The most obvious is extravagance. As the narration tells us, Bedaux's entourage for his Canadian expedition included wife Fern, her Spanish maid, a geologist, a geographer, a surveyor, a radio operator, a Scottish game warden, a Citroën mechanic to tend to the five "half-track" vehicles the French automaker supplied, an "professional Alpine guide," an Italian-Swiss countess (who also happened to be Bedaux's mistress), 130 pack horses (one that carried only women's shoes), 53 cowboys and, among the 20 tons of supplies, 400 pounds of books, asbestos tents, silk pajamas and gourmet food.
As Ungar chronicles both the expedition and Badeux's life, we see how he was a self-made man who was born in a middle-class Paris suburb and arrived in the U.S. with just a dollar in his pocket. After numerous jobs in numerous cities, he found his calling when he overhauled the shop floor of a chemical works where he was a lab assistant, and boosted its efficiency. Soon he started his own management consultant firm, and within a decade he had offices in over a dozen countries and blue-chip clients, and was a millionaire.
Bedaux's Canada trip came when he was at his most powerful. As Ungar doles out footage showing it turn into a logistical nightmare, with Bedaux staging elaborate "narrow escapes" for his movie, The Champagne Safari tells of the downfall of Bedaux himself, too. Not only would Bedaux's "speed-up systems" (lampooned in both A Nous la Liberte and Modern Times) face a backlash after 1934, so too would Bedaux. He had used his fortune to buy a 16th-century chateau in France, which he then turned into a place where he could hobnob with the rich and aristocratic. One of his new friends was The Duke of Windsor, the abdicated English king. When Bedaux needed to buddy up with the Nazis, who for a time shut down his German office because the Third Reich was now in control of all industry, he arranged for the fascist-friendly Duke to make a tour of German factories. Bedaux also helped the Nazis streamline the French coal industry after Germany occupied France, and he persuaded the Nazis to bankroll his project to build a Trans-Saharan railroad and several pipelines through the former French colonies in North Africa.
Bedaux's motives seem more financial than ideological, and The Champagne Safari never argues that Bedaux was a Nazi spy, as others have. But when the U.S. entered the war and the Allies pushed the Nazis out of North Africa, Bedaux's downfall was imminent (he tried to sell the railroad/pipeline idea to the U.S., but it didn't work). Yet Bedaux is as beguiling in death as he was in life. After being arrested for treason and brought to Miami for a trial, he killed himself after hoarding the sleeping pills he'd been given and taking them all at once. But there are many who believed that Bedaux, who might have testified about the large number of major American corporations who did business with the Nazis, was encouraged to finish himself off, if not outright murdered.
Bedaux's life is as fascinating as his failed Canadian expedition, and although The Champagne Safari DVD includes no substantial extras, it's a full, satisfying meal. No desserts are necessary.
For more information about The Champagne Safari, visit First Run Features. To order The Champagne Safari, go to TCM Shopping.
by Paul Sherman
