Marie Antoinette (1938)

Director:  W. A. Van Dyke II.

Starring:  Norma Shearer,  Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley (Louis XVI), Gladys George, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut.

MGM costume drama based on the life of the Queen of France.

Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), queen consort (1774-1792) of Louis XVI of France; her unpopularity helped discredit the monarchy in the period before the French Revolution.

MARIE ANTOINETTE

A&E Biography

1755  -- born in Vienna; the 15th child of Austrian Emperor Francis Stephan (also known by the title Holy Roman Emperor Francis I) and Empress Maria Theresa.

Some say that she had a very happy childhood and that she was always trying to get back to that wonderful place. Her childhood was very important to her. But how could it have been that happy when her mother, Maria Teresa, was a blackmailing, critical, hyper-scheming woman who ruined her children’s lives. And at age 9 her father died.

Maria Teresa then took over. She continued the expansion of the Austrian Hapsburg empire by marrying off her daughters to other crown heads. But when smallpox carried off one sister and then disfigured another, Marie became the child her mother wanted to marry the future king of France.

But she was ill-prepared for such an event. Her education had been neglected since she was the 15th child.

Setting off for France, the 14 year old never saw her mother or her homeland again. She was officially handed over to the French and renamed Marie Antoinette; dressed in French clothes; and even her Austrian dog was taken away. She became French property.

Louie was the Dauphin of France. He was not meant to be there. His brother, who was supposed to be king, had died.

Marie was disappointed when she met him because he was extremely cold to her. They were both still children.

1770 May -- she arrives at Versailles. It was another world, reflecting all the glory and power of France. And part of the new world was the world of palace rumors. One of the great rituals was making fun of the royal consort when she showed up. They criticized her every move. Many saw her as a foreign spy. Court groups and factions found fault with her and they wanted the king to divorce her. Marie was not by nature manipulative and that was part of the problem. Louie’s tutors told him to distrust Marie, that she would try to dominate him.

Her job was to produce a new heir, but nothing happened year after year to the enormous humiliation of Marie Antoinette. Her mother knew what was happening.

Louie was not very sexual. He had a low sexual drive. Marie needed solace and took refuge in pleasure: buying clothes and gambling excessively. She ran up debts with the king discreetly paying the bills.

There may have been a love affair (although there is no proof of this). The supposed love affair was with Swedish nobleman, Count Furzen. He met her when she was 18. He was handsome and sophisticated and a womanizer. But the romance did not flourish until later. He was to remain devoted to her for his whole life.

Louis XV died of smallpox. Now the honeymoon was over.

Marie had a penchant for favorites and disliked court etiquette. She appointed her best friends to plum jobs in the household. Her favorite was Yolande d’Polonack(?). She was intrigued with her friend. In those days, a popular idea was Rousseau’s idea of female friendship. Women were considered to have a communion of feeling that was alien to the nasty, horrible men. The two women were always kissing each other and telling secrets in corners.

Rumors began that the queen was a lesbian. It did great damage to her reputation. Malice and almost pornographic pamphlets accused her of bankrupting France, having sex with her dog, and passing money to her Austrian relatives.

After seven years of marriage there was still no heir. At public events they hissed the queen.

Her brother Joseph, now emperor Joseph II, was dispatched by Maria Teresa to save the royal marriage. He told Louie the facts of life. He took him into the bushes to tell him how it is done sexually. It seems to have worked. She got pregnant and, in all, gave birth to four children. She had been frivolous and even selfish, but now she was a mother and a good one.

A rumor circulated that she had said "Let them eat cake." She didn’t say it. In fact, she was intensely compassionate by nature. She was caricatured as a harpy who hated the poor.

There was no real passion between Louie and Marie and she turned to Count Ferzen who had recently returned. He did not want anything from her for he was the son of the richest man in Sweden. (We can’t prove there actually was a love affair between the two.)

1785  --  she is hurt further by her supposed connection with the so-called Diamond Necklace affair, a scandal involving the fraudulent purchase of some jewels.

The nasty rumors continued. She remarked to one of her maids that all this slander would one day kill her. Then came a scandal called the Affair of the Necklace. She did not like the diamond necklace a jeweler made for her. She thought it was too gaudy. She persistently refused it. That stuck the jewelers with the necklace. Then a con artist named Jeanne D’Lamont found a way to steal the necklace. She led the jeweler to believe that the necklace was being bought on behalf of the queen and she would be paid for it, but took it for herself. Marie was innocent, but was still blamed for the theft. There was a stream of abuse directed toward her.

Louie called in an Assembly to approve the raising of taxes. The Assembly refused to approve the reforms. It marked the beginning of the end for the monarchy.

Louie sinks into depression. He starts to have an enormous appetite and may have developed an alcohol problem. It robs him of his ability to make good decisions and this gives more power to Marie Antoinette. She had will power but no intellect. He had intellect, but no will power and the two could not bring their talents together in a good team.

The mob marched on the Bastille where they thought the government was storing gunpowder. While this was going on her eldest son was dying of tuberculosis.

1789 June 4 -- her son dies in great pain. The indifference of the French people to the death of her child seared her to the heart.

Weeks later several thousand protestors marched on Versailles. An armed gang broke into the palace itself. The mob searched upstairs looking for the queen. She was terrified. It was an assassination attempt. They slash her bed to pieces.

The mob gets pushed back to the marble court yard. The king comes to the balcony but the crowd asks for the queen to come to the balcony. She goes out holding her children. The mob shouted "No children! No children!" Many in the crowd leveled their muskets at her. She stood there for two minutes. Then they shouted "Long live the Queen!" Once inside, she collapsed.

The royal family was taken to Paris by an armed guard, surrounded by the decapitated heads of their own guards. Louie signed a new constitution that greatly reduced the monarch’s power.

Marie-Antoinette refused to compromise with the moderate revolutionaries.   The royal family were seen as traitors and liars. Marie worked to save the monarchy. Secretly, she started to write to foreign governments asking for armed intervention in France. Her enemies were convinced of her duplicity.

She was a rather straight forward, simple person. She wrote Furzen telling her of the terrible situation. She became good at dissimulation, which showed she had more grit and intellect than thought. She wanted her son to inherit the throne.

Even her family seemed to have abandoned her.

1792 Feb -- Furzen paid a private visit to Marie and Louie. Furzen wanted them to escape but Louie was not interested and the queen would not leave Louie behind.

The Paris mob invade their prison in the Tuilleries -- the family taken to the temple prison under tight security. For awhile they tried to live a normal family life. By the very end the king and queen were very tender to each other. There were moments she could have escaped, but she would not. She said it was her duty to die at the feat of the king.

Outside the prison the mob called for their deaths.

Louie was put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death. He was given only a short time to say good bye to his family. The king said to the priest confessor "How loved I am!" He felt truly loved as he left for the scaffold.

His widow was only living for her son. But Louie Charles was seized as a hostage ad taken to another part of the prison. She could hear her son’s sobs and could see him through a crack when he would take his daily walks in the courtyard.

France declares war on Austria. She becomes an enemy alien. Transferred to the Congeries, a huge public prison where many inmates awaiting the guillotine. Her possessions were taken away from her. A young maid smuggled a mirror into her. These little acts of kindness kept her going.

1793  -- revolutionary tribunal. She goes on trail, being accused of plotting against France, helping the king to escape, and passing millions on to Austria.

The people were aghast when they saw her. She looked terrible. The trump card against her was the accusation that her son had accused her of a serious crime. They said he charged her with abuse, incest. They had gotten him drunk and beaten him to get him to make a statement against his mother.

When put to the test, she was extraordinary. They questioned her three times about the incest. They asked her why she did not answer and she finally stood up and said "Because nature itself refuses to answer such questions." And then she added "I appeal to all the mothers here."

She thought she would be saved because all the mothers in the room clapped. But she was found guilty on all counts. At age 37 she was to be executed, the next day.

She was always a pawn in the political game, both going into the marriage and leaving life.

She faces the guillotine on October 16. On the day of her execution, she writes a last letter, to her sister in law. In it she tells her children to love God and to forgive the people. She says on the outside life can seem to be about ambition and money, but the real life is the inner life, the life of God.

She was very ill and hemorrhaging badly. Her hair was cut. She was led out to the scaffold where a crowd of thousands awaited. She cried "My God, if we’ve committed faults, we certainly have atoned for them." She was a person she might have always been, serene. She apologized to her executioner when she accidentally stepped on his foot.

Her life began with bad luck and ended up with even worse luck -- a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.