wehadfacesthen: Another favorite film is Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938). My response to this

wehadfacesthen: Another favorite film is Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938). My response to this film is purely emotional. I saw it as a boy. It’s a black and white epic but so was our TV set at the time (yes, children, I am old) so the lack of color didn’t detract from the enormous spectacle of the story of Marie Antoinette, from girlhood to the guillotine. Norma Shearer is Marie Antoinette. Norma has had many detractors over the years, saying her style is too artificial, too full of silent film poses and gestures. But to be honest those are the things I love about her, those poses and gestures, the quivering chin before the tears fall, the back of the hand to the cheek to express fear, the raised quavering voice to indicate courageous suffering (her only contemporary match in courageous suffering would be Sally Field). It’s that theatricality, so grand, so epic, so like opera in it’s refusal of realism, that those old dames - Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo - brought with them from their years in silent film to create their thrilling  performances. They knew how to communicate wordlessly - yes, with gestures, poses, and facial expressions. As Norma Desmond knew so well, they didn’t need words, they had faces…. So what else about this movie? Glorious costumes by Adrian and sets by Cedric Gibbons, a dashing performance by Tyrone Power and a heartbreaking one by Robert Morley as Louis XVI. The ending is devastating, Marie Antoinette in prison, alone, her husband dead and her children taken away. As she rides to the guillotine she remembers how as a girl she had been so thrilled: “Just think, Maman, I shall be Queen of France!” -- source link

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