Marie Antoinette
Obviously the folks in 18th century France weren’t
listening to rock music or speaking English. They probably didn’t
have such nice teeth either. But Marie
Antoinette isn’t all about Hollywood liberties. What
you’re seeing is the real Castle Versailles lived in by Louis and
Marie, because director Sofia Coppola wrangled permission from the curators
of what is now a museum.
Coppola Talks Castle Versailles for Marie Antoinette
“We went and met the director of Versailles
and I explained my approach for the film,” said Coppola. “I
think he read the script. They were very positive and encouraging. He liked
that I was attempting to tell the story from her point of view and really
opened Versailles to us, so I feel lucky. I thought it would be more difficult
but the people that worked at Versailles were very open to our production.
On Mondays the interior is closed to the public so we worked there, and
then on other days we were allowed to shoot on the grounds.”
Old castles aren’t build with pull-away walls, so much of Coppola’s
cinematography was dictated by restrictions of the location. “The
hall of mirrors was actually under construction, half of it, so we had to
cheat, reverses and things like that. But I think what we got in return
was the chateau Versailles becomes a character in the movie and I think
we couldn’t have recreated on that level. It would have been more
fragmented. I’d seen a little bit of the movie with Norma Shear, Marie
Antoinette which has a very kind of Hollywood artificial feeling
to it. I wanted this one to feel as naturalistic and authentic as possible.”
Her actors got the significance of the location. ‘I always sense the
essence and the atmosphere of a movie,” said Kirsten Dunst. “I
think that’s what Sophia evokes so powerfully in her films is atmosphere
and I don’t think she could have made this movie anywhere else. For
me, to have that it’s a character in itself. I could walk around at
night before I shot the balcony scene and look in mirrors and touch the
wall and look at a clock. To be in a place where you think well maybe she
looked at this clock and I wonder if she looked at herself in the mirror
when she was feeling you know. Your imagination, there’s so much to
feed when you’re actually in the places.”
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Jason Schwartzman, who plays King Louis XVI, took
advantage of the opportunity to live his character. “They were very
welcoming to us and very gracious with their home basically,” he said.
“I even tried when I went there, I had a goal to go there so many
times that I could myself give a guided tour of Versailles, and I feel like
I got to that point. Like I wanted to be really familiar with it and call
it my home, and I felt pretty comfortable there. I mean, I didn’t
like sit on the chair. You don’t just sit on the chairs and stuff.
There is a protocol. It is a museum, and you have to work there and inhabit
that space with respect for history and everything, but it was a magical
place to be. I would look out a window between takes and I could think,
‘Wow, maybe Louis looked out this window,’ and you touch a curtain,
and your mind begins to play around with stuff like that.”
For Coppola, there could have been no substitutes. “Someone asked
me the other day what our plan B was and I never have a plan B,” she
said. “I always have something in mind and then just you’re
determined to convince people to let you do it, so I’m not sure. We
weren’t able to shoot there every day because it’s open as a
museum, so on the days we couldn’t, we got chateaus that were of that
same period and dressed them, so I guess we could have done more of that.”
Marie Antoinette opens this Friday, October 20th.
For more interviews, posters, trailers, additional movie info and synopsis,
go to the Marie Antoinette
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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