I finally got around to viewing Sofia Coppola's weird "Marie Antoinette (2006) and while it was lovely to look at it was ever-so-slow and overstretched into its two hour running time. Kirsten Dunst plays Marie as a shopaholic Valley Girl who manages to grow -- we are led to believe -- into a regal role. I thought she was marginally too old to play the young Dauphine, but then again this casting was a probable improvement on 36-year old Norma Shearer in the classic MGM 1938 version. (Mind you being married to the studio production chief enabled her to play the youthful Juliet two years earlier). As her sexually-disinterested husband, Jason Schwartzman (a fine example of nepotistic casting since he is Coppola's first cousin) was not a patch on Robert Morley in the earlier movie and said his lines as if he was reading from a teleprompter. In a high profile cast, only Rip Torn as the dissolute old king and Asia Argento as his mistress Madame DuBarry breathed any life into the decorative but somehow tedious proceedings.
Also within the last day or so I rewatched "Conquest" (1937), known in Britain as the less meaningful and more unpronounceable "Marie Walewska" which was the name of Greta Garbo's character, a Polish noblewoman married to an elderly gentleman who is encouraged to sacrifice her honour to Napoleon's lust in a bid to save Poland. Her husband annuls their marriage and she becomes the Emperor's mistress; when she finds that she is pregnant and about to break the news, he announces that he must marry a royal princess to establish his dynasty. So Garbo nobly and silently withdraws from the scene for many years. Napoleon here is played by Charles Boyer or rather he amazingly inhabits the role of the bumptious upstart, prepared to sacrifice everything and anything for his continued (but doomed) conquest of Europe. This was one of MGM's most prestigious and expensive productions, but frankly it feels overstuffed and airless, and even the gorgeous Garbo seems subdued. But with a supporting cast numbering (among others) Reginald Owen (see his Scrooge below), Henry Stephenson, Dame May Whitty, and the always memorable Maria Ouspenskaya, I'll take this film over Coppola's ornate romp any time.
1 comment:
Pairing these two films is understandable since you saw them close together but it
is rather like comparing Cedric the Entertainer with Cary Grant - a no-contest.
Rip Torn and Asia Argento did breathe some life into the tedium and I suppose
Dunst did convey the hedonistic thoughtlessness with which Marie Antoinette is
associated.
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