Tea at Trianon: Christmas and "Little Women"

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

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Christmas and "Little Women"

All the film renditions of Alcott's novel are lovely to watch at Christmas. From Vogue:

The first snow has fallen. The end-of-year sentimentality is steadily welling up (this year more than ever). There’s only one thing to do now: Watch Little Women (2019). I specify the date because, as Little Women-philes know, there is a long tradition of Louisa May Alcott adaptations, catalogued by their dates and/or their Jos and Lauries. There’s 1994 (Wynona Ryder, Christian Bale); 1949 (June Allyson, Peter Lawford, with an honorable mention for Elizabeth Taylor as Amy); and a Katharine Hepburn as Jo incarnation in 1933. But it is director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), also known as the Saoirse Ronan–Timothée Chalamet version, that has become an instant, Christmas-adjacent classic.
There are Christmas movies and there are movies that are Christmas-adjacent—films that evoke the holidays without being so terribly on the nose about it. Gerwig’s Little Women contains overt Christmasness, of course: Boughs bedeck practically every mantel of the March home; the sisters give their Christmas breakfast to the less-fortunate Hummel family (only to be gifted a Marie Antoinette–style spread by their moneyed neighbor James Lawrence). The following Christmas, Amy (the resplendent, Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh) strings popcorn and Mr. March (Bob Odenkirk, whose casting is the only bad thing about this movie) returns from the Civil War.
But even when it’s not literally December 25—the day Little Women (2019) premiered last year to great fanfare—Christmassy magic infuses the entire film. The jubilant Alexandre Desplat score helps, along with crackling fires, fields of snow in Concord, Massachusetts, buoyant curly hair, houndstooth coats, frequent dance parties, and nonstop drama. Sure, The Family Stone is cool, but nothing beats your bitchy little sister lighting your novel in progress on fire, then later taking your place as your rich aunt’s companion to Paris, where she proceeds to get with the beautiful man whose proposal you just turned down. I’m willing to forgive the presence of Better Call Saul, because the casting of said rich aunt—Meryl Streep as Aunt March—never, ever gets old, and I’ve seen this movie three times now. (What is Christmastime without a salty aunt who tells you everything you don’t want to hear?) (Read more.)