Makeup in Marie Antoinette

[smhoffmann]

I noticed there are a few characters in the movie Marie Antoinette who wear very exaggerated white makeup and red cheeks, one elderly lady in particular, and I think the rest were older as well. I was wondering what the explanation is for this, when most of the characters are wearing very little makeup. Is it historically accurate?

Comments

[childings]

From what I could tell the movie was one of the most historically accurate I've seen, if you don't count the soundtrack. Coppola stuck pretty close to Frasier's book, which was heavily researched.

[childings]

Aside from something like fashion or the general look of the movie, what was something that stood out as a glaring historical inaccuracy? Keeping in mind that it glossed over a large period of time in about an hour and a half.

[x_in_tenebris_x]

I thought the way MA is represented in the movie is completely different from the way Fraser depicts her, trying to 'justify' her because of her poor upbringing, while in the movie she's the stereotypical featherbrained stupid queen from the opposition pamphlets :/

[childings]

I didn't really get that she was completely featherbrained (let's be honest, she wasn't the most intelligent person in the world -- I felt it portrayed her as more of a practical person than people usually assume) from watching the movie... it's like she was meant to be a sympathetic character for once. As for the whole Fersen affair, nobody really knows what happened and therefore can only assume, but it doesn't make for good film-making to just shrug it off.

Basically, when making movies about historical events, sometimes details get sacrificed to make an actual movie, something entertaining, as opposed to a PBS documentary style film. And also for length. For a film like this one to actually still be pretty accurate is amazing. And I can't really think of another 18th century movie right off the top of my head that's any more or less accurate than this one, really.

[smhoffmann]

I agree, the movie is one of the most sympathetic portrayals of Marie Antoinette I've ever seen, and she certainly doesn't come off as stupid. Frivolous, yes, but that is pretty much an objective fact, and I really feel like the movie says "You would be frivolous too, if you could afford this kind of stuff."

I always like to hear someone defending or praising this movie, I think it's probably one of the most unfairly hated movies ever made.

[childings]

I have to admit that from a film-making standpoint, the movie was directed more like one really long music video, but since it was chock full of things I liked (including my favorite song) I was able to overlook the problems with it (the pacing of the movie particularly good, for instance).