Tea at Trianon: Peter Jackson's New Film

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Peter Jackson's New Film

From Forces Network:

A hundred years on, 'Lord Of the Rings' director Sir Peter Jackson has seen footage of a mine explosion that his own grandfather was only a hundred yards away from on the Western Front at the time. He saw the footage while making his new film 'They Shall Not Grow Old'. The Oscar-winning director has breathed life into original First World War footage for the documentary that shares real stories of veterans who lived through the 1914-18 conflict. Sir Jackson and his team colourised and restored the footage from the archives of the Imperial War Museum - most of which has never been seen before – to produce an incredible insight into what life was like during “the war to end all wars”.
'They suddenly become real human beings, they’re not Charlie Chaplin...They’re real people with all the nuances and subtleties of human beings.' (Read more.)