Tea at Trianon: Marie Antoinette: The Trial of a Queen (2018)

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, June 2, 2022

Marie Antoinette: The Trial of a Queen (2018)

The actress looks nothing like the Queen but I understand that she captured her personality. From Frock Flicks:

This was a TV film and as I said, it’s a docudrama. Weirdly, there are two “episodes” listed on Amazon. The first is entirely the drama portion of the docudrama but with voice over narration; the second is the same film, but intercut with talking head historians, and so I assume there’s some content that’s cut from the first episode — I don’t know, when I figured out they were essentially the same thing, I stopped watching episode 2.

You can tell this film was made for French viewers, because it really starts with Marie-Antoinette moved to solo imprisonment in the Conciergerie, with a few flashbacks, and moves through her execution. I would think a lot of non-French viewers would be confused by the lack of context showing what led the queen and the country to this point. Luckily, I am pretty familiar! The doc came out at the same time there was an exhibit going on about the changing image of the queen, and I’m thinking the filmmakers were trying to help viewers understand that Marie-Antoinette wasn’t all cake and parties — something again I think most French people would know, but you definitely learn a lot about her character when you understand how she reacted to this whole ordeal.

Maud Wyler (Maison Close, Diary of a Chambermaid) plays Marie-Antoinette, and I think she’s a good choice. She conveys the queen’s quiet strength very well, something that’s hard to do given that was indeed how the queen responded to things — no big fiery emotional scenes here to work with, but you can see her intelligence and strength of character. She does look a little young for the role — Marie-Antoinette was only 37 when she died (Wyler was 36ish when this aired), but the revolution was very hard on her, and she died looking much older than she was (including her hair turning white). Wyler definitely looked drained, but not the 50s-ish kind of look I’d expect. (Read more.)