American, The

Christopher Newman (Matthew Modine), is the ideal post-Civil War new American man, arriving in Paris to soak up culture and anything else he may have missed while making millions at home. It is here, surrounded by the secretive drawing rooms and lush museums, that he falls in love with Claire de Centre (Aisling O'Sullivan), a beautiful but emotionally damaged young widow who was forced by her cunning, hateful mother, Madame de Bellegarde (Diana Rigg), to marry a brute to remain in the French aristocracy. Newman must struggle to get Claire away from the clutches of her family, while reconciling the drastic differences between her Old World European culture and his new, free-enterprise, democratic society. (Verleiher-Text)