Write a sequence analysis of a clip (maximum length: 5 minutes) from the film Marie Antoinette and discuss this sequence in relation to the film as a whole.
The sequence to be analysed in this essay is from Sofia Coppola’s
2006 film Marie Antoinette. It is an unconventional historical drama
based on the life of Queen Marie Antoinette in the years leading up to the
French Revolution. The clip takes place at the beginning of the film from
timestamp 09:28-11:20[1]
when a young Marie Antoinette is crossing the border into France. She is
transformed from being an Austrian archduchess into the Dauphine of France
through a ritualistic ceremony in a tent. Marie, played by the young actress
Kirsten Dunst, was to be married to Prince Louis in Versailles and it was
custom that the bride would retain “nothing belonging to a foreign court”.[2]
She is curtly separated from her pet dog
and her cloths so that she can emerge from the other side, dressed in the style
of the French court. This clip highlights the politicisation of the female body
through the use of editing techniques and costume as well as the breakdown and
recreation of Marie’s new identity. This ritual also becomes a rite of female passage
that transforms her from a young girl who has no responsibilities into
adulthood where she is to be married. One can even interpret such a journey as parallel
to the experience of the director, Sofia Coppola herself, and her experiences
in the world of Hollywood, creating a universal theme of feminine struggle in
an unknown and privileged world. The music in this clip is not of note,
although the writer acknowledges that it is relevant at other points throughout
the film.
As Marie is de-robed in the tent, it stresses her status as
a symbol that solidifies the alliance between Austria and France, objectifying her
female body by turning her into a ‘doll’ that is to be dressed and undressed. The
tent becomes a makeshift structure, a passageway through which she must pass in
order to become the Dauphine of France. The land before her that she must step
out onto is representative of her new French home. Throughout history, the
real-life Marie Antoinette has always been presented as frivolous and fool
hardy, contributing to the cause of the French Revolution through her expensive
taste and spending. However, in this clip, she is stripped away from these pre-
connotations, creating a much more sympathetic portrayal of her plight. Here
she is merely a young girl who has been thrown into the unknown ‘adult’ world
of the French Court at Versailles that she knowns little about, highlight the
sense of loneliness that is associated with such a transition. The film itself
was adapted from the sympathetic biography by Frase which was a “spate of
revisionist works that attempted to humanize Marie Antoinette and reassess her
role as villain of the French Revolution”.[3]
In the clip, a series of close-up shots of her face as her cloths were removed
in the tent emphasize her youth and innocence, she was barely fifteen when she
was to be married off. Her facial expressions her distraught and uncertain, yet
she is offered no comfort by the maids and servants around her. She is bereft
of her mother, her sisters and even her dog and she is uncertain as to what is
expected of her. According to Weber, this scene is an example of Marie’s early
victimization. She highlights, not Marie’s girlish nakedness, but the expression
of the Austrian and French courts in cementing their alliance through, and on,
her body.[4]
Fashion is one of the most important methods Coppola uses to
demonstrate Marie’s visual transformation from a young Austrian girl into the
young Dauphine of France. In the clip, the art of undressing becomes remise of
the re-fashioning of the self, contributing to the creation of Marie’s new
identity. Fashion and costumes are a “strong part of the movie”,[9]
instead of merely being what the characters wear, they become political ideas
in themselves. Throughout the film there was an excess of lavish dresses and
opulent backgrounds at Versailles, suggesting that it is an important aspect of
the film’s world. As Marie begins "the donning of French clothes,"[10]
she assumes a new identity: "my French self".[11]
In the tent, she is stripped of her Austrian travel cloths and at timestamp
11:08-11:20,[12] there
is a medium shot as she emerges from the tent redesigned into the far more elaborate
fashion of the French Court at Versailles. The full body shot allows the
viewers to directly compare her change in fashion to when she had first entered
the tent. She had arrived at the ceremony in a simple white dress, which
according to Ferris and Young was suggestive of “a blank canvas”.[13]
She leaves in a beautiful full skirted baby blue dress, her hair has been
curled and styled on her head and she wears a tricorn hat. In this instance the
French Court has used fashion as a form of submission against her, forcing her
to remove all physical signs of her Austrian roots. Marie would later become
known as a fashion icon in Versailles, constantly spending and buying new
dresses just as her real-life counterpart once did. In the film, fashion became
an affirmation of her feminine power rather than merely being a symbol of
frivolity. During third wave post feminism, culture and feminism intersected to
create what is now known as ‘girlie’[14]
culture, that is of costumes and fashion. During the third wave, expensive
clothes were a signal of autonomy and empowerment, suggesting that Marie was
later able to use fashion identity as not only a way to exploit her anxieties
around identity, but as a way to carve her own power base at court through her
various dresses and towering pouf hairstyles. The specific clip is Marie’s
first introduction to the world of fashion at Versailles, foreshadowing the
later excesses that would come. Marie is later able to reclaim power over her
first submission to their fashion, allowing the clip to develop multiple layers
when re-watched in the later context of the film.
French fashion can be seen as a visual reflection of Frances
ownership of her body. When Marie emerges from the tent onto French soil at
timestamp 11:08-11:20,[15]
a large blue bow is tied around her neck, a symbol of the strangling pressures
of the French Court. Her primary function in her marriage was to bear heirs for
the Prince to cement the Austrian- French alliance and to be an object for his
pleasure. She is decorated with the bow and presented as if she was a gift to
the Prince as that is the outfit that she wears to meet him at Versailles for
the first time. The bow also foreshadows her future fate of decapitation by the
guillotine, marking out the line across which her head would be severed from her
body. By contrasting the bow with the pulse of the actress’s chest, Coppola has
already marked her protagonist with the references to her future death, right
at the very beginning of her entrance to the French court. At timestamp
1:04:31- 1:04:58[16], when
Marie is at Versailles, she receives a letter from home from her mother,
criticising her and her lack of ability to bear heirs. She sinks to the ground
in despair and as the actress’s head falls back, one can see that she is
wearing a thin peach-coloured choker around her neck. According to the critic
Brevik-Zender, it is once more suggestive of a “metaphorical noose”,[17]
as her position as queen is precarious and dangerous. When she was reading the
letter, she was wearing a floral print dress that matched the floral pattern of
the wall paper behind her. As she sinks down, she becomes overwhelmed by these
floral patterns as they come to dominate over her. In both instances, the use
of the bow and choker around her neck reminds Marie of the role she must play
at court and her new duties, and the failure to do so leads to a much more
sinister interpretation of these pieces of fabric around her neck.
The colour palette is used to portray Marie’s emotional
growth and development throughout the film. In this particular clip, she goes
from wearing a simple white dress to wearing a baby blue dress. Her life is a
series of transitions: physical, temporal and psychological as she advances
through different stages of development: independence, marriage and motherhood.[18]
Each period of her life has a corresponding fashion moment, reflected in the
colours used for her dresses. As Marie walks out in her baby blue dress in the
clip, it is the beginning of the film’s use of light hearted pastel colours to
show her introduction to the French court and her experiences as a young girl
in it. She has transitioned from wearing white, a symbol of her purity and her
innocent childhood that she must leave behind in Austria. The director of
costumes, Milena Canonero explains that “in the beginning I used innocent
colours until the end we finished with grays, sad mauves and dark blues”.[19]
At the end of the film, she wears much darker tones in reflection of the sombre
mood of the country as it descends into revolution. In the clip, there is even a
contrast to the dark colours worn by the Countess Noailles who was to be her
lady in waiting and her guide at court. Her social and sexual experience as a
result of her age and status are reflected in the darker tones that she wears,
a stark contrast to the white and pale blue that Marie wears. As Marie steps
outside the tent, the dark blue of the curtains of the tent contrast the pale
blue colour of her dress, yet another reminder that Marie is out of place at
court. The dark and strong shades are a reference to the malicious nature of
Versailles, of the rumours and gossip. The pastel shade of baby blue on her
dress emphasises the softer and sweeter side of Marie. Indeed, she wears
dresses in similar shades of pastel when she is showing moments of kindness and
compassion, such as when she organized the lunch for the huntsman at timestamp
40:04.[20]
Coppola has been accused by critics of being a “filmmaker devoted to visual
beauty rather than plot”,[21]
creating a film of ‘style over substance’. Yet, this clip directly contradicts
such a notion as fashion has been used to explore not only the inner feelings
of Marie, but also is a reflection of the social and political atmosphere of
her surroundings.
Marie Antoinette is an unconventional historical
drama in that it is not so much concerned with a ‘realistic’ depiction of Marie
as a historical figure, but rather, it makes the audience aware of how Marie’s
image and identity has been constrained by the concept of identity imposed on not
only by her society but by the film and the director herself.[22]
There is relatively little detail on the social and political atmosphere of the
18th century, the causes of the French Revolution are barely
mentioned. Marie is the central focus of the film, and in the clip, the camera
matches her eyeline during the close-up shots. Viewers are to see her
introduction to the French court through her perspective, allowing them to
identify with her as a female protagonist entering into an unknown world. Coppola’s
take on the world of fame and privilege that she is soon to enter into is
similar to that of her own entry into film making in Hollywood. She was the
daughter of Hollywood royalty: her father was renown director Francis Ford
Coppola. She was accorded both wealth and exposure to the dominant film
industry, which contributed to her perceived lack of skill or ‘true’ talent as
a director.[23]
There are “unmistakable parallels between the director’s experiences as a
celebrity member of one of Hollywood’s royal families and Marie Antoinette’s
situation as a target for xenophobia, malice and envy in pre-revolutionary
France.”[24] The
Guardian goes as far as to say that “Sofia Coppola could easily be a character
in one of her own films, a day-dreamy, slightly disconnected but immaculately
stylish waif”[25]. Coppola’s
own persona has been collapsed with the way she represents her female
characters, blending the past and present towards a continuity of girlhood that
is transferred easily from twenty-first-century United States to
eighteenth-century France, and vice versa.
This merging of the past and the present allows for a
transhistorical reading of Marie Antoinette. She represents both the
figure and spirit of her time but she is also an example of how woman and girls
of the modern era are not so different from their 18th century
counterpart. Both face opposition they must struggle against as they try to
find their place within society and her transformation in the tent takes on
another metaphorical reading. At timestamp 11:08-11:20[26],
as she walks forward it becomes a female rite of passage as they journey from
one world to another, from girlhood into womanhood and in Coppola’s place her
move into the world of film. Coppola’s two prior films The Virgin Suicides
and Lost in Translation offered similar such portraits of sensitivity
and femininity. Both centre on young women who are trying to find their place
in the world and to map out their own identities. Marie Antoinette is
the final part of this trilogy: “(i)t’s a continuation of the other two films –
sort of about a lonely girl…trying to grow up…This is a story about a girl
becoming a woman.”[27]
The transhistorical nature of her approach towards the young Marie allows for a
much deeper emotional connection between her and the female audience.
Coppola delineates her central characters rite on two levels
within the selected clip: it is a ritual that will transform her identity,
status and even nationality through the transformation of her outward
appearance just as her ‘handover in the tent is a transformation of girlhood
into womanhood as she enters a new culture to become married. These themes
transcend the limitations of its historical constraints and come to signify the
struggle that modern women themselves must undergo, allowing for a much deeper
emotional connection with the figure of Marie. There are similarities between
the trials of Coppola’s own life as a daughter of Francis Ford Coppola in
Hollywood and Marie’s own struggle within the French court at Versailles,
creating a film that manages to merge the past and the present together. Fashion
is one of the most important aspects of the clip. Through its use of colour and
even the smallest detail, such as the bow tied around Marie’s neck, Coppola is
able to translate both the political ideology of fashion as well as its
sentimental value. In this instance Marie must submit to the fashion of
Versailles, a physical demonstration that she has given up her Austrian
heritage, allowing the French court to establish their claim over her person.
Bibliography:
Brevik-Zender, Heidi, ‘Let Them Wear Manolos: Fashion,
Walter Benjamin, and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette’, Camera Obscura,
26.3 (2011)
Cook, Pam and McGill, Hannah. “Portrait of a lady: Sophia
Coppola.” Sight & Sound, 16.11 (2006) pp.36-40, 68-69.
Cook, Pam, ‘History in the Making: Sofia Coppola’s Marie
Antoinette and the New Auteurism’, in The Biopic in Contemporary Film
Culture, ed. by Tom Brown (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 212-27.
Diamond, Diana, ‘Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette: Costumes,
Girl Power and Feminism’ in Fashion in Film, ed. by Adrienne Munich
(Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2011)
Ferriss, Suzanne and Young, Mallory, ‘Marie Antoinette:
Fashion, Third-Wave Feminism, and Chick Culture’, Literature/Film Quarterly,
38.2 (2010), pp. 98-116.
Kennedy, Todd, ‘Off with Hollywood's Head: Sofia Coppola as
Feminine Auteur’, Film Criticism, 35.1 (2010) pp. 37-59.
Marie Antoinette, dir Sofia Coppola, 2006 (US:
Colombia Pictures), online film recording, BoB, https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00F8C7BD?bcast=105034237
[accessed: 02/01/2021]
O’Hagan, Sean,
‘Sofia Coppola’, The Guardian (2006) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/oct/08/features.review1#:~:text=Sofia%20Coppola%20could%20easily,a%20world%20of%20extraordinary%20privilege.&text='That's%20the%20most%20important%20thing,and%20I%20need%20complete%20freedom. [accessed: 07/01/2021]
Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna, Genre, ship and Contemporary
Women Filmmakers Book (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
Rogers, Anna, ‘The Historical Threshold: Crisis, Ritual and
Liminality in Sofia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette (2006)’, Relief, 6.1
(2012), pp. 80-97.
Weber, Caroline, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette
Wore to the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006)
[1]Marie
Antoinette, dir Sofia Coppola, 2006 (US: Colombia Pictures), online film
recording, BoB
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00F8C7BD?bcast=105034237
[accessed: 02/01/2021]
[2] Ibid
[3]
Pam Cook, ‘History in the Making: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and the New
Auteurism’, in The
Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, ed. by Tom Brown (London: Routledge,
2013), pp. 212-27 (p. 219).
[4]
Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the
Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006) p. 27.
[5]
Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[6] Anna
Rogers, ‘The Historical Threshold: Crisis, Ritual and Liminality in Sofia
Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette (2006)’, Relief, 6.1 (2012), pp. 80-97 (p.87)
[7]
Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[8] Rogers,
‘The historical threshold’, p.92.
[9] Diana
Diamond, ‘Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette: Costumes, Girl Power and Feminism’
in Fashion in Film, ed. by Adrienne Munich (Indiana: Indiana University Press,
2011) p. 208.
[10]
Weber, Queen of fashion, p. 5.
[11]
Ibid, p. 5.
[12]
Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[13] Suzanne
Ferriss and Mallory Young, ‘Marie Antoinette: Fashion, Third-Wave Feminism, and
Chick Culture’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 38.2 (2010), pp. 98-116, (p.102)
[14]
Diamond, ‘Costumes, girl Power and Feminism’, p. 209.
[15] Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[16] Ibid
[17]
Heidi Brevik-Zender, ‘Let Them Wear Manolos: Fashion, Walter Benjamin, and
Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette’, Camera Obscura, 26.3 (2011) pp.1-33
(p.17)
[18]
Ferris and Mallory, ‘Marie Antoinette’, p. 98.
[19]Diamond,
‘Costumes, girl power and feminism’, p. 216.
[20]
Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[21] Katarzyna
Paszkiewicz, Genre, ship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers Book (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2018) p. 182.
[22] Todd
Kennedy, ‘Off with Hollywood's Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur’, Film
Criticism, 35.1 (2010) pp. 37-59 (p. 37-38)
[23] Paszkiewicz,
Genre on the surface, p. 177.
[24] Pam
Cook and Hannah McGill. “Portrait of a lady: Sophia Coppola.” Sight &
Sound, 16.11 (2006) pp.36-40, 68-69 (p. 37)
[25] Sean
O’Hagan, ‘Sofia Coppola’, The Guardian (2006)
[26]
Coppola, Marie Antoinette
[27]Kristin Hohendal, ‘French Royalty as seen by Hollywood royalty’, The New York Times (2006) https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/movies/moviesspecial/10hohe.html?pagewanted=all
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