O Calvário de uma Rainha

When I watched the movie again the other day,it was followed by a debate where two historians and a writer Simone Bertière said that ,in spite of some inaccuracies,they did like the movie.Mrs Bertière wrote an absorbing biography of the unfortunate queen :although it's very long (800+ pages in paperback),I recommend it to all people interested in my country's last (and most famous) real queen (the two queens of the 1815-1848 Restoration do not count)I wish it could be translated into English .

Jean Delannoy,the bete noire of the Nouvelle Vague ,did an OK job.The historians noticed how the scenes of the trial resembled old engravings.Michele Morgan is well cast as the aging queen ,but in the first scenes she's inevitably too old -in her thirties when the queen was 15!-The same goes for Jacques Morel's Louis XVI:not only he was too short for a king who was 1.90 meters high -,but he is too caricatured.

Best scenes : the first ones,including the saucy sequence where Louis the Fifteenth tells his grandson what he 'll have to do...in bed in thinly veiled terms;His death and the noise of a hundred feet walking to the room where the new sovereigns are waiting;the trial and the guillotine scene ; the presence of a non-juring priest(a Michel Piccoli cameo) under the scaffold and the altar with blood stains are good ideas even if it's dubious from a historical point of view.

But objections to Delannoy's film remain.It should have been called "Marie-Antoinette and Fersen" cause the handsome Swede (played by earnest thespian Richard Todd ) plays a too prominent part.He's present when the populace screams in Versailles "The queen on the balcony!" "Not the children" ;he helps them settle in the Louvre.All this is pure invention,probably coming from the romantic mind of the scenarists And during the long day of Varennes ,when he leaves the king and the queen en route to Brussels (historically inaccurate),he and Marie -Antoinette act as if the King is no longer here.On the other hand ,it's true that Fersen was the brains behind the mad escape.

Too many important events are omitted :the storming of the Tuileries is absent,which is a problem since it was the fall of the monarchy and the birth of the first republic.

A good thing:the dialog is full of historical sentences ,not only during the trial,but during the whole movie.That said,the movie about this queen is yet to make:Maybe Sofia Coppola..Maybe...there's always hope,they say...

The only way this film can be seen in North-America is, occasionally, on the French-Canadian TV stations, in Quebec and Ontario. It has several advantages over the 1938 Norma Shearer version: It is made by the French; it is more historically - one could say maniacally - accurate in its sequencing of events; it is more intimate, concentrating on Marie's love affair with Fersen without skimping on the recreation of every important watershed in the Revolution; it uses actual locations (Versailles, Trianon, le Hameau and the Tuileries); it is in colour; it has very gripping and unforgettable moments of suspense; and it stars Michèle Morgan, one the most beautiful and naturally aristocratic women on the planet and also a very touching actress. The film excels in discretely recreating the actual look and feel of Marie Antoinette's world (such as her pastoral distractions, the formality of court life and the detailed horror of her treatment by the Revolution). In a cast of hundreds of top-notch actors, English import (and Disney favourite) Richard Todd does a marvelous job as Fersen, besides being a dead-ringer for the real man and having his English accent approximate the original's Swedish accent. The music, art direction, photography and film direction are excellent. The entire package is very well-made with no expense spared even if it runs just a tad too long for the average viewer. But its message, its attention to detail, its story arc and poetry are clear and astounding. One has to wonder what copyright problem can actually bar this masterpiece from rebirth on DVD. To my knowledge it has never been available on VHS, except as a made-from-TV bootleg. (I have one and I'm not trading!) It is actually sad to think that its DVD issue could be tied in with Sofia Coppola's version, which already promises to be the ultimate infantilized and dumbed-down rock-and-roll version...

This is an interesting film, and worth comparing to "Marie Antoinette" with Norma Shearer. Both films broadly cover the queen's life, with particular emphasis on her romance with Count Axel von Fersen. But while the American film treats the romance as more of a platonic relationship, the French film is more open and accepting of it as an extramarital affair. The film changes in tone from comic (in depicting Marie fending off the advances of her amorous, though inept husband) to tragic (Marie's execution, symbolically suggesting religious martyrdom), but I suppose this is to be expected.This film shows more of Marie's pastoral amusements at Versailles (e.g, dancing shepherdesses bring Marie and Axel pitchers milk in porcelain pitchers). The depiction of the infamous "Affair of the Necklace" is somewhat sketchily presented, and may confuse some American viewers who are unfamiliar with the event. The film is very lush, and Michele Morgan and Richard Todd make very attractive leads. If you are not fluent in French, some familiarity with the life of Marie Antoinette or the events of the period will help you follow the film. While it is not a perfect film, it is appealing and worth your time.