Marie Antoinette

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Rousseau's first six books were written in 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age, and published when she was 26, eight years after she became queen. The phrase appears in book six of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical Confessions, whose first six books were written in 1765 and published in 1782. Rousseau recounts an episode in which he was seeking bread to accompany some wine he had stolen. Feeling too elegantly dressed to go into an ordinary bakery, he recalled the words of a "great princess": [5] Marie-Antoinette is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in all of French history. This volume explores the many struggles by various individuals and groups to put right Marie's identity, and it simultaneously links these struggles to larger destabilizations in social, political and gender systems in France.

Coppola: I asked Antonia Fraser if she thought Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen really had a love affair and she said, “Well, I’d certainly like to hope they did.” There’s enough evidence to suggest so, but did it get physical? Who knows.A Franco-Austrian alliance was certainly a controversial development, as many people in each country hated the other; prior to the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), King Louis XV of France (r. 1715-1774) himself had been an enemy of Maria Theresa. Yet following that conflict, the weakened Kingdom of France had begrudgingly entered into an alliance of necessity with Austria, with both nations agreeing that such an alliance should be solidified with a marriage. It was eventually decided that Maria Antonia would be married to Louis XV's grandson, Louis-Auguste, Duke of Berry (l. 1754-1793) who had become heir and dauphin of France upon the death of his father in 1766. So, after a proxy marriage and a renunciation of all claims to Habsburg lands, Maria Antonia set off for France to meet her new husband and arrived in Versailles on 14 May 1770, aged only 14. Along with the title of dauphine, she also adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette. Dauphine of France

Nighy: Some of the dialogue was scripted, but Sofia left quite a lot of space in the script for improvisation. There were lots of descriptions that said “In X conversation, Y is said.” Sofia would just throw us into environments like the masked ball and start filming. Lance and his camera seemed incredibly discreet and very fluid throughout filming, which really allowed the actors to feel un-self-conscious. Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna on 2 November 1755, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. Her marriage with the future Louis XVI, celebrated in the Royal Chapel at Versailles on 16 May 1770, was partly the work of the Duke de Choiseul, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and one of the principal architects of the reconciliation between France and Austria. The marriage nonetheless met with a lukewarm reception from the French public, who had not forgotten their country’s long-standing enmity towards the House of Austria. A highlight of the lavish festivities to mark the royal wedding was the inauguration of the Royal Opera. Coppola: I made reference boards that had a lot of New Romantic visuals and John Galliano’s work at Dior. He designed some dresses inspired by Marie Antoinette and I loved that mix of 18th-century fashion and couture. Milena is a genius and completely understood what I was going for. She interpreted the era with such a fresh feeling and palette. Marie was into fashion so we wanted the film to feel fashionable. The role that she played in French internal and foreign policy between the accession of Louis XVI and the outbreak of the Revolution has probably been much exaggerated. Her efforts, for example, to secure the return to power of Étienne-François de Choiseul, duc de Choiseul, in 1774 were unsuccessful. The fall of finance minister Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot in 1776 must be attributed to the hostility of chief royal adviser Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas, and to the differences that arose between Turgot and foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, over French participation in the American Revolution rather than to the direct intervention of the queen. Marie-Antoinette was not, at that time, interested in politics except as a way of securing favours for her friends, and her political influence never exceeded that formerly wielded by the royal mistresses of Louis XV. Katz: There was a very good chance we were gonna get turned down. But one of the reasons the palace said they approved us was because Sofia’s film didn’t sound like another dusty costume drama. They said “Versailles is not a museum, it’s alive.” They didn’t want a movie that felt like a museum piece and Sofia presented a really vibrant take on a person we’ve only really seen in paintings before.On a May morning in 1664, in the small village of Versailles, as hundreds of young aristocrats are coming to pay court to King Louis XIV, a peasant fan-maker gives birth to her first and only child, Marguerite. Determined to give her daughter a better life than the one she herself has lived, the young mother vows to break the newborn’s bonds of poverty and ensure that she fulfills her…