Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 2-September-07
Spoiler Rating: High

Marie Antoinette (1938)

A couple months back I noted how the French Revolution offers fertile ground for storytelling and now I have found the most magnificent example of this fact. Rarely have the trappings and happenings of history been so well applied to the grand Hollywood style than in "Marie Antoinette." This classic starts out a sumptuous period piece, blossoms into a transcendent romance, and finishes a six-hankie weeper that could melt the heart of a Gorgon.

Just how did they do it in the golden age, create characters at once larger than life and more human than today's cardboard cutouts? Every step of the process must have been different, from writing to scoring to directing. Certainly no modern actress would deliver a performance like Norma Shearer's slightly hammy but utterly mesmerizing one. The woman could cry at the drop of a feathered hat and was unafraid to undergo complete deglamorization for the sake of art. At the beginning of the film she glows with hope as the Austrian princess betrothed to the dauphin of France through the maneuvers of her powerful mother. Arriving at Versailles, she discovers that her bridegroom is an oaf (Robert Morley) who regards marriage and offspring with distaste. (Whether he is gay or asexual due to emotional retardation is open to debate.) For two years she tries to conform to his withdrawn lifestyle but eventually succumbs to loneliness, boredom, and palace intrigue and becomes the social butterfly of Paris.

In this second phase Shearer sheds a glittering new light that clashes with her earthy beauty and character's essential goodness. Thus does a noble Swedish count (Tyrone Power) reject her as disappointingly tacky when they first meet. Their bond is written in the stars, however, and when a run-in with the king's mistress threatens to send Antoinette packing only the count steps forward as her champion. She finds true love and her better self in his arms, but, ironically, this strength is immediately needed elsewhere as the king dies and she and her husband ascend the throne.

It's a bitter pill to pledge one's heart and watch it go, but our heroine braves her fate by forging an affectionate marital partnership which finally produces children. At this point Shearer assumes a matronly air (and makes no mention of cake) while her enemies arouse the people's hatred against her and the privilege for which she stands. When at last the mob takes her prisoner, she shows the spirit of a woman who has performed her duty with a clear conscience. The movie masterfully wrings pathos from the events leading up to her execution, as she draws closer to her family only to lose them and receives two momentous visits from the count, who remains beautifully, tragically faithful to the end. (Seriously, tissues are required to endure it.) Shearer is unrecognizable by the time she heads to the guillotine, a transformation emphasized by a flashback to the enthusiastic girl from the opening scene. The real Marie Antoinette knew a sad, dramatic journey, and in fine tradition this picture plays it for all its worth.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.