MARIE ANTOINETTE no stars

You know you're in for an epic and one of M.G.M's most opulent productions when you begin with an overture, (it even precedes the lion's roar), and before you have time to say The Palace of Versailles, a thousand extras are flooding the screen and a teenage Marie Antoinette, (played by the 36 year old Norma Shearer), is being wed to Robert Morley's Dauphin. The fact that Shearer gets away with it shows what a good actress she could be and the fact that Robert Morley holds his own against the assembled company shows what a better actor he was.

Unfortunately Miss Shearer was only good up to a point. She seemed to have two acting styles, 'giddy and gay' (in the old fashioned sense of the word) and 'tremulous and tragic' and she was slightly better at giddy and gay. As the film progresses, and she's apt to lose her head, she reverts to the kind of acting that went out of fashion around 1910. As for the film itself, it's pretty terrible. It may have been expensive and gorgeously designed but it's badly written and the director, W.S. Van Dyke, seems to have forgotten when to say 'cut'. Scenes go on and on long after they have made their point and an otherwise decent cast is wasted.

A somewhat dashing Tyrone Power may be cast as the romantic lead but he's hardly in the picture. John Barrymore, who plays the old king, must have been strapped for cash; Gladys George as his mistress, Mme Du Barry, is lively if out of place. The previous year's Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor, Joseph Schildkraut makes an excellent foppish villain, mincing around as if he should be Queen in the early part of the film before scrubbing off his make-up so he can blend in with the mob, (rough trade, all), later on. Worst of all, that appalling child actor Scotty Beckett is cast as Shearer's son, the young Dauphin. I kept praying Mademoiselle Guillotine would fall on his little neck from the outset.

As for historical accuracy, let's just say the main facts of the case are there in school-book fashion. I don't recall hearing Marie say 'Let them eat cake' at any point but then with Shearer in the role she had to be made to look as sympathetic as possible. In the end it's Morley's picture; he gives it a touch of class all the fancy sets and costumes never could and he should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1938.