Marie Antoinette (2006) Online

This is a really beautifully produced bio of Marie Antoinette. I saw it when it aired on PBS and rented it later to view again.

Blair Brown does a wonderful narration, and the direction of images and information is marvelous. One quibble is that the French historians are only translated in subtitle, not audio; so this might bother some folks.

This is infinitely better than the slap-dash Bio: Marie Antoinette, Queen of Versailles; BUT that one has lovely, lingering shots of Marie's Shepherdess village which is only shown here at a distance here. Since that village has really fascinating, fanciful architecture (like early Disney or OZ), that (otherwise lousy) bio is worth seeing, too.

Get them both, watch the bad one first, then settle in to watch this one, for a really complete, interesting, top notch bio pic from PBS.

This was a very human account of the lives and deaths of Marie Antoinette and Louis the XVI focusing primarily on Marie. It is an account of their lives from birth to death and the circumstances leading to the downfall of the French monarchy. It is done with actors and many painted images of the King and Queen. It tells of the great incompetence of the monarchy both from the King and the Queen and the public rage that built to a crescendo. It tells how Marie was tried, convicted, and scapegoated in the public eye by the press of that time. This documentary leaves you with the feeling that a great injustice was done to Marie and her family. Although she was not by any means portrayed as an angel, she probably did not deserve the punishments forced upon her. A very enjoyable well done documentary, especially for people who are interested in history.

I liked this documentary. I knew nothing of Marie Antoinette before. But this kept my interest. Based on a quick scan of other materials, it seems to be accurate, but not complete. Maybe a miniseries would be welcome.

I want to counter what some other comments have said.

Marie Antoinette certainly deserved the guillotine, and the film shows why. She committed treason, repeatedly, and it is not unusual that such crimes were punishable by death (although I personally oppose the death penalty in all cases). The problem in Marie's case is not that she was executed, but that she was executed without adequate evidence. That's not a crime against her (who also perjured herself) but is a crime against justice, and the liberty the new republic so desired.

And it is important that we see the actual items that were used to discredit and demonize the Queen. There's simply no way that you can express these items adequately in words. If an audience can't handle seeing them for about 5% of the movie, I suggest the problem is with the audience, not the movie.

It's a story of a tragic life, given a privileged start, but then confined and wasted, and realizing only too late that she actually had to do something to keep her job, and then doing exactly the wrong things. Her children didn't fare much better, and the republic started with hypocrisy. Nobody won.

Saw this on You Tube. I honestly don't know how this David Grubin character has 10 Emmys, 3 Peabodys, and 2 Duponts - as his website oh-so-modestly informs you - because this just plain stunk!

A paint-by-the-numbers job complete with cheesy reenactments, this Marie-Antoinette (there is an "-" between the names!) is an airhead who can't be bothered with the world outside her gilded cage. Naturally, this "explains" why Her Airheadness invited the children of the working-class to Versailles, and had her children give their toys to the poor. Marie-Antoinette's sense of noblesse oblige isn't even hinted at here; Grubin, as so many of his ilk, cherry-picks what fits into his agenda, the facts be damned!

However, Grubin seems to have this thing for illustrations of bare-breasted women in compromising positions; the viewer is subjected to at least 5 minutes of this. A simple blurb about how the Queen's reputation was dragged through the mud in pornographic songs, pictures, and pamphlets would have sufficed, thank you very much!

And would someone please tell Antonia Fraser to get a grip? She looked as though she's about to burst into tears at any moment!

Before you watch this with your kids or grandma, you might want to know that this documentary is PG-13. The film gives MANY intimate details of her not too terrific sex life with her husband, Louis XVI! Additionally, the French public took great pleasure in passing around various obscene engravings supposedly showing her having sex with MANY different people (something that has never been proved, by the way) and some were highly imaginative! I am not saying these shouldn't have been in the show--but you might want to think twice about showing it to some folks.

Like a typical PBS documentary, this one consists of nice narration, interviews with various experts, paintings and engravings (see above) and recreations by actors dressed as the various characters. And, like a typical PBS film, it's top quality--expertly directed and with nice music. Well worth seeing and giving you some insight into why this queen was eventually executed. Well done.

By the way, the film featured an interview with Simon Schama in which he said "...having her bedroom violated was like being raped...". I think he should have thought out this comment a bit better, as Marie Antoinette having peasants ransacking her bedroom was not at all good--but to compare it to sexual assault seemed a bit wrong.