Marie Antoinette is a 1938 American historical drama directed by WS Van Dyke that follows the life of Marie-Antoinette (Norma Shearer) and her life as queen consort of King of France Louis XVI.
The movie also stars Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut, Gladys George, Henry Stephenson, Cora Witherspoon, Barnett Parker, and Reginald Gardiner.
Not to be confused with the 1989 film, the 2006 film and the 2022 series.
Tropes for the film:
- Character Title: Marie Antoinette.
- The Film of the Book: Based on Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman.
- Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Marie wears a dress where the skirt almost entirely covered with feathers.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Marie has dresses with various amounts of ribbons, frills, feathers, fur, and jewelry.
- Pretty in Mink: Marie has outfits with fur, since the real Marie of course did wear some fur-trimmed dresses.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, receives a big one. The real Orleans was a genuine believer in the principals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu, who used his position to foster support for liberalism and democratic reform. He was initially supportive of The French Revolution, but eventually turned against its excesses, saved several people from being executed, and was eventually guillotined himself. In the movie, however, Orleans is, in fact, the primary orchestrator of the entire Revolution, which he cooked up as part of an insidious plot to seize the throne, after failing to seduce Marie Antoinette. During the so-called "Affair of the Diamond Necklace", he becomes a full-blown Diabolical Mastermind, using forgery and impersonation to frame the Queen for fraud. Eventually, he maliciously casts the deciding vote in favor of executing Louis XVI, before being executed offscreen by the rabble (he did vote in favor of it, but was hardly the decider, though some people did take that as an attempt by him to get rid of the king and seize the crown for himself).
