Our wrap-up recap of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette follows, sadly, the wrap-up of Marie’s life. We compare and contrast the movie to reality, and try to untangle the movie’s timeline adjustments.
When we last left Marie, the cool kids were sneaking back into Versailles after an all-night party only to learn that the king was ill with smallpox. Marie and Louis had yet to consummate their marriage and the spend-a-thon of the monarchy was going full steam ahead while political unrest bubbled up in the lower classes.
So heat up some water and make yourself a cup of blooming Jasmine Tea like Marie serves to her brother, the Emperor (so I guess it’s good enough for us common folk) and start playing the music from the opera, Les Deux Chasseurs et la Laitière that she performs (and fakes sweeping) and let’s revisit some moments of this episode!
The king is on his death bed, and Du Barry is sent out out of the picture in the most fabulous cape!
The king is dead, long live the king…whose first statement is a reassuring,”We are too young to reign!”
We need to fix this baby problem…a king, an emperor, and an elephant have a sex talk.
GASP…Oooh!
The talk worked…well, the talk and the brown chickens and brown cows.
Wonder what it was like to be a servant in Marie’s household? Here’s an article about la maison de La Reine!
Oh my goodness, did they or didn’t they? Marie and Axel Von Fersen did, or didn’t, all over the place in this movie.
And we spend a lot of time at le Petit Trianon…yay!
But then there is trouble…Marie can only fantasize about Adam Ant…
…and Louis gets a lot of bad advice about sending money to the Americans’ war with the British (and he needs to stop playing around.)
Louis gives us an insider “Cribs” view of Versailles:
A bright spot is another child, a son! The Dauphin! (and Susan’s hang-up about non-newborns playing newborns is revealed.)
But Marie’s reputation is swirling the drain (and told with a clever use of paintings.)
Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun
Speaking of paintings…liberties were taken with the number of children and composition of actual painting, but it’s still really good storytelling.
Also Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun
Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun (the artist who is shown here) didn’t paint the portrait they are posing for!
Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller did.
The French Revolution is amping up, Louis makes some more poor decisions for his family and while Marie really did address the angry crowd like this, it wasn’t enough.
We were grateful that the movie ended with Marie’s trashed room after the family was taken to Paris.
If you haven’t had enough of Marie (really? Is there enough of Marie?) head on over to our coverage of her entire life, in Episodes 53 and Episode 54 of The History Chicks Podcast.
We also recommend these two books to go along with this movie:
And if you are as fascinated as we are with Leonard, here’s a book we liked!
Will Bashor
Photo Credit: Marie Antoinette, Netflix; Stills: The History Chicks via Netflix
Before we dive back into an historical fiction series we thought we would recap one of our favorite movies, Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst and directed by Sofia Coppola. Made in 2006, it’s now (in March of 2018) on Netflix. *hugs Netflix* Because we seem to double the length of the original media in our recaps, and this is a two hour movie, we decided that a four hour podcast really needed to be broken into two episodes.
You’re welcome.
The myth
14 year-old Maria Antonia is married off to the Dauphin of France and sent from her native Austria to the epicenter of French luxury, political intrigue and a whole lotta nobles ignoring the realities of their country: Versailles.
Au revoir, Maria Antonia…
…Bonjour Marie Antoinette
(For more details on the actual wedding journey, From Vienna to Versailles, from Royal Central. Part One and Part Two.)
Marie gets to know her new family…
Aunt Mary Catherine Gallagher and Aunt Jude/Moaning Myrtle
…and meets the man she proxy married weeks before, Louis Auguste, the Dauphin of France.
.Louis, the Husband, not to be confused with Louis the King or Louis, or any other Louis- there are many.
Marie gets to show off her dancing skills, her charm and her adjustment to the peculiar and unique rules of Versailles. So. Many. Rules.
Speaking of so many rules, check out this Baroque dancing!
But anyone can dance WITH music, how about without it? Here’s how they did it for the movie Call Me By Your Name.
Also, speaking of rules: Marie and Louis’ marriage is not official until they consummate it. One of the Versailles protocols in play is a wedding night, beddy-bye ceremony, with an audience. The couple gets a blessing and everyone gets ready to catch some heirs tout suite. But IT didn’t happen for our movie couple on their wedding night because it didn’t happen in real life for a very long time. This gives us our major plot point of the a sizable chunk of this movie: when are they going to have sex and why aren’t they?
The putting to bed ceremony.
In addition to the actors, Versailles and the costumes are stars of this movie.
Dresses like this are why this won an Oscar for costuming.
If you want to play along with What Kind Of Dress is That? Here is a lovely primer from American Duchess.
We follow Marie using retail therapy to ease her woes, which –spoiler alert–is at the root of her biggest life problem later.
Manolo Blahnik created hundreds of pairs of shoes for this movie…not the Converse, though.
We end this episode just after Marie meets Adam Ant…er, Axel Von Fersen, the only man cool enough to get away with not wearing a mask to a masked ball.
Roger Ebert reviewed this back in the day, and he liked it as much as we do (or the other way around since he covered it first. Here’s what he had to say: ROGER EBERT 4-STAR REVIEW
If you haven’t given a listen to our coverage of the real life of Marie Antoinette, you might want to do that. That, also, is a two-parter. Part One and Part Two
The Four Tendencies that we talked about (Princess Lamballe is a total Upholder) are from Gretchen Rubin. Her podcast is Happier and here’s the link to her Four Tendencies Quiz.
You really have to listen to the episode to know why we’re closing with this, but we must.
(Parent warning: all of the Gustave Klimt paintings in this video do have nudity in them!)
Photo Credit: via Netflix; Stills: The History Chicks
In Part One we talked about Marie Antoinette’s childhood, the speedy preparations for marriage and her early years in France. In this episode, the conclusion of our revisit, we get to the rest of her story as she travels from well-liked to queen to the (dramatic pause) guillotine.
Husband, Louis XVI, while fumbly in the Create an Heir department and lacking a lot of things in common with her, was kind to Marie. During her, let’s call them “party years” he indulged her and gave her a little playhouse all her own so that she could escape the demands, traditions and all the backstabby, gossipy people of Versailles: Le Petite Trianon. It was a place Marie could let her hair down, grant admission to only those who she invited and frolic and dress like a fair country maiden (Disney World style– no need to actually take care of the animals, that’s what the servants are for).
Louis XVI. He gave her this…
Le Petite Trianon, Marie’s playhouse…
…where she hung out with her friends including him. Axel Von Fersen (Dreamy, right?)
Once upon a time there were two podcasters who began their women’s history show with an episode about Marie Antoinette. Four and a half years later they revisited her life simply because they felt there was more to say about this woman who has been long misquoted and misunderstood. They were able to add a great deal of content and context and have a much longer conversation -two parts!- about the life of the last Queen of France.
(The first episode was never heard again and we all lived happily ever after.)
Marie in her softened years, by Louise Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun
This statue commemorates the over 700 Swiss guards who lost their lives defending Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI at the palace of the Tuileries.
A view of the lion from the turn of the century, before the floodlights get in the way.
The statue that Mark Twain called “The saddest piece of rock in the world.”
4. The poop on… poop at Versailles
Marie Antoinette had a very early version of the flush toilet installed in her suite of rooms! You had to send someone upstairs to open a valve for the flush, though…
There were lots of chamber pots in the place, or course, and plenty of latrines around… but what did many courtiers and visitors end up doing instead of seeking out these facilities? Why, pooping on the stairs, of course. Or in the corners of the Hall of Mirrors, when the darkness fell and they could be assured of some privacy.
Horrifying? Check out Frank Muir’s book “An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom.” (Queen Elizabeth I had one of these toilets, too, but hated it – because it was too noisy. )
3. Beauty Marks in a Box
In eighteenth century Europe smallpox raged through the continent, leaving most of its survivors pockmarked in some way. False beauty marks made of velvet, silk, and moleskin were introduced as a way to cover the scars left by smallpox, though they soon blossomed into an independent fashion statement. A variety of shapes were available: hearts, crescent moons, stars and clubs, even a tiny carriage pulled by minuscule silhouette horses!
In France, a patch was known as a “mouche” (fly), and was held on by the application of a flexible and very sticky glue made from the skins of fish. The meaning of the patches’ placement varied by country, and often aesthetics alone won the day – but in France, a patch on the right cheek meant that one was married, one near the mouth meant flirtation, and if the lady next to you wore her heart-shaped patch near her eye – watch out! That was the mark of unbridled passion…
A patch box including a brush, glue well, and patch compartment. Note the mirror on the lid!
Johnson and Johnson made these until WWI !
2. Aeronautic History Made at Versailles.
The first successful lighter-than air flight took place at Versailles in 1783! The Montgolfier brothers used hot air from a fire of wool and wet straw to power their balloon, which was made of cotton with azure-blue gilded paper glued on each side.
A sheep, a duck, and a rooster were the passengers placed into the wicker basket beneath the balloon, and then it was released in front of an astonished crowd – and immediately went 1600 feet into the air! Despite a tear in the fabric, the vehicle traveled over a mile before coming down. The animals were placed into King Louis XVI’s menagerie to reward them for their “service.”
Can you imagine how amazing this must have been?
1. The Marly Machine
How did they power all of those fountains at Versailles? The fact is, they didn’t. Most of the time, the only fountains that were operating were the ones in sight of the king. Special workmen cleverly closed or opened valves to whatever water features the king might see in a given day. Otherwise, most of them remained dormant!
The “Marly Machine” was constructed to get water to the palace through a long copper aqueduct. The Machine included not just an enormous structure on the river itself, (with fourteen giant paddlewheels) but sprawled all the way up the hill, with pumping stations, holding tanks, reservoirs, pipes and an intricate system of mechanical linkages to power pumps on the hill from the waterwheels below.
Despite the fact that at full capacity, it could put a million gallons a day into the reservoir, the system could never serve all of the fountains at once.
This system was loud enough to drive the neighbor (Madame Du Barry) to complain!
