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Jun 30, 2008
« Madame du Barry » : paparazzi dreams come true. (4/5)
In « Madame du Barry », politics is made of the stuff of « people » magazines, except that the « people » magazines of the times were not for the « people », but for aristocrats only and particularly the « happy few » in Versailles, who followed each minute and step of the king’s life.
Court « etiquette » looks like it was designed for a population of paparazzi and to make their life easy : each moment in the monarch’s life is accessible subject to the proper pass and even Versailles chimneys gladly assist gossipmongers in their smear-gathering efforts.
More than any Republican palace or celebrity’s life today, Versailles was transparent to eyes and ears.
Christian-Jaque’s « Madame du Barry » and Sofia Coppola’s « Marie-Antoinette » chronologies overlap each other : Arch-duchess Marie-Antoinette came to Versailles to marry Arch-locksmith Louis not yet XVI, while Madame du Barry reigned over the king’s nights.
In Sofia Coppola’s film, Madame du Barry was played by dark, ominous-looking Asa Argento.
True to History, both films portray Marie-Antoinette like a fifteen-year old teenager, who arrived in Versailles innocent of both French Court’s « etiquette » and lax moral standards ; shocked to discover that her grand father in-law had a mistress, she refused to speak one single word to her.
This was the second time in two years Martine Carol was snubbed in Versailles : in Sacha Guitry’s « Si Versailles m’était conté », she played la Duchesse de Bouillon, born Mancini, one of prime minister Mazarin’s nieces, who had groomed fabulist Jean de la Fontaine for success ; all of her scenes were later deleted and the experience was all the more humbling that the edited film ran for no less than one hundred and sixty-five minutes.
The attrition war between the two women came to an end when, under strong pressure from both her Austrian reigning grand-mother and Louis XV, Marie-Antoinette acknowledged Madame du Barry’s existence long enough to utter these words : « Il y a du monde aujourd’hui à Versailles », « There is a big crowd today in Versailles »...
One easily imagines Christian-Jaque’s and Henri Jeanson’s sardonic smiles, as they staged these words of utter banality like a climax of wit in a movie graced with so many memorable one-liners.
Marie-Antoinette’s remark reminds of Paul Valery’s derogatory comment about the art of the novel : how to take seriously a literary genre allowed to open on such a dismal sentence as « La marquise est sortie à cinq heures », « The marchioness went out at five » ?
Adding to the irony of the scene, Marie-Antoinette is played by Isabelle Pia, whose character, one year before, in « Le bon dieu sans confession » prepared to become a single mother and live in an apartment her father had initially bought -unbeknown to her- for his -platonic- lover.
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