Le Versailles secret de Marie-Antoinette (2018) - full transcript

(peaceful music)

(water pattering)

Versailles, the ultimate expression

of the power of the king built it, Louis XIV.

At the very limits of the domain of Versailles

stands an odd little village from another time.

It seems abandoned, but in fact, it was never populated.

The Queen's Hamlet is the secret refuge of Marie Antoinette

where she escaped her ceremonial life

at the Court of Versailles.

It's here she sought happiness,



the one thing forbidden to a queen.

Over time, humidity and neglect have taken their toll.

The buildings were never meant to survive her,

but her dream lives on.

Two centuries after revolution sealed her fate,

craftsmen are restoring the house of the queen

with the same gestures as the original builders.

Marie Antoinette transformed Versailles,

and Versailles transformed Marie Antoinette.

The Hamlet was her last creation.

It's just three kilometers from the palace,

but for Marie Antoinette, it was a voyage of 19 years.

(tense music)

No.



On this autumn morning of 1789,

Marie Antoinette learns that 6,000 angry women

are marching on Versailles demanding bread.

Returning to the palace for safety,

she goes back in time, lost to her memories.

Not long ago, happiness seemed possible here,

far from the court and politics.

(somber music)

The queen doesn't yet know it,

but this will be her last day in Versailles.

She remembers the first time

she passed through the gate of Versailles

as if it were yesterday.

(peaceful music)

A child, just 14 years old.

(tense music)

She entered a world of wealth and extravagance

that even a Habsburg princess found daunting.

And she didn't come by choice.

She was dispatched from Vienna

to marry the meek and studious

15-year-old heir to the French throne, Louis Auguste.

The two were polar opposites in temperament,

but they were just political pawns.

The real marriage was between France and Austria,

an alliance engineered by her mother,

Empress Maria Theresa, and Louis XV.

It was designed to remake the face of Europe.

This Franco-Austrian marriage

results in what is known as the Diplomatic Revolution,

a reversal of alliances in which France's

historical enemy, Austria becomes her ally.

The young princess found herself alone

in a closed and frozen world called Versailles.

Imagine Marie Antoinette

discovering Versailles.

She arrives in a century-old chateau

whose decor is just as old.

It's like living with your great grandparents.

The furnishings have barely changed since the Louis XIV.

For the past 100 years,

Versailles had functioned explicitly as the ultimate symbol

of the absolutist monarchy's grandeur.

Louis XIV had actually conceived of the palace

as a showcase for his limitless riches and limitless power.

Louis XIV, the Sun King,

placed himself at the center of his creation.

Every surface reflected

the glory of the monarch as he passed.

(tense music)

More than a building,

Versailles was a system of ceremonial spaces

where nobles vied for the supreme privilege

of being close to the body of the king.

The decor was pure Bourbon propaganda.

(gentle music)

And Marie Antoinette detested it.

(tense music)

Versailles was a political theater

where everyone knew their role, except Marie Antoinette.

On her wedding night, she discovers the public ceremony

by which the royal family

guarantees the bloodline of its heirs.

The newlyweds find themselves in bed

lying side by side with all the curtains wide open.

The entire court gathers in front of the two young people

and officially wishes them a good night.

Then the curtains are closed.

They are not being spied on, per se,

but everyone knows what is going on.

The 14-year-old bride

is shocked and humiliated.

The court of her childhood in Vienna

was much less severe in its etiquette.

She discovers that at the Court of Versailles,

there is no privacy for members of the royal family.

For Marie Antoinette, what this meant in practical terms

was that she was surrounded from waking up in the morning

until going to bed at night

by a large retinue of courtiers,

including about 28 women from the high nobility

and the local bourgeoisie

who attended to her physical person.

The Ladies of Honor were hand-picked by the king.

They were not people that Marie Antoinette

had the freedom to select herself.

The whole day is planned in advance,

waking up, washing, getting dressed,

dinner, supper, and bedtime.

The schedule is set ahead of time like a performance

and is carried out with the precision of a ballet.

Courtiers participate according to their rank.

(light music)

The most famous moment,

described to perfection by her lady in waiting,

is the dressing of the queen.

Marie Antoinette is surrounded by a swarm of courtesans.

The duchess pulls up the right sleeve of the queen's dress,

while someone else pulls up the left one.

Suddenly, there's a scratch at the door.

A princess enters, her rank is higher than duchesses,

so they have to start all over again.

And there is Marie Antoinette,

standing in the dead of winter,

shivering and losing her patience with this endless ballet.

(clock ticking)

(Marie sighs)

The clothing that was worn by the courtiers

and the members of the royal family was subject,

like everything else at the palace,

to a strict, elaborate, and very subtle code.

Marie Antoinette rebels.

She throws offs the constraints of the grand corps,

a punishingly tight corset

that only royal princess were entitled to wear.

Her refusal to wear the grand corps

provoked a dramatic diplomatic incident.

It was an insult to the women of the court

that their future queen should not be willing

to wear a garment regarded as a supreme mark of privilege.

Marie Antoinette underestimates

the importance of such etiquette,

which is a huge error of judgment on her part

because behind each tiny privilege hides a courtesan.

Her rejection of this etiquette

provokes jealousy and resentment and ultimately hatred.

In Vienna, Maria Theresa understands

what Marie Antoinette does not,

that enemies in the court threaten the alliance.

Maria Theresa asks her ambassador in France,

Count Mercy Argenteau, to keep her informed

on her daughter's every move through secret reports.

And Maria Theresa fires off her own letter,

counseling her daughter to act responsibly.

My dearest daughter,

a wife must always be submissive to her husband

and should have no other concern

above and beyond pleasing him and doing his bidding.

As for the king, love him, obey him,

and try to read his mind.

As a young dauphine, Marie Antoinette was essentially

in the same position as virtually

all of the other courtiers at Versailles

in that her survival at court, her prestige at court,

her advancement at court all depended

on the degree to which she succeeded

in currying favor with the king.

King Louis the XV hunts almost every day

along with her husband,

and she takes up riding to accompany them.

The convention for highborn women

was that they ride sidesaddle and Marie Antoinette decided

that she preferred riding astride.

Almost every French king

has been pictured on horseback, but it's rare for a queen

and never at a gallop, never astride.

She had her portrait painted straddling a horse

in a pose that looked strikingly similar

to some of the famous equestrian portraits of Louis XIV.

So, Marie Antoinette identifying herself

with this iconography of male royal power

essentially seemed to be suggesting

that she was the one who wore the pants

in her marriage with the feckless Louis XVI.

(light music)

Throughout the kilometers

of corridors and private apartments

that formed the backstage to Versailles, rumors spread.

The Austrian princess is controlling the heir to the throne.

Marie Antoinette ignores

the gossipy old courtesans.

She calls them packages for their old-fashioned dress

and dismisses the elderly daughters of Louis XV

as the centuries.

Marie Antoinette is a genuine queen

who yearns for genuine friendships.

She prefers to take into account

her feelings or a person's qualities over their rank.

She selects friends her own age,

younger, lighthearted, fun people who will be referred to

as a coterie, or more precisely, the queen's society.

Marie Antoinette's first real friend at court

is Princess Lamballe, sweet, beautiful, and bland,

from the house of Savoy.

Charles Philippe, the Count of Artois,

her husband's witty and extravagant brother,

introduces her to the pleasures of Paris nightlife.

And she's dazzled by the Countess of Polignac,

beautiful, charming, charismatic, and almost penniless.

(guests chattering)

The little group adores Paris and masked balls of the opera

are a favorite nighttime escape

from the rigid, predictable routine of life at the chateau.

(guests laughing)
("Rondo alla Turca")

She was out every night at the opera balls in Paris.

So, that's pretty much all night in Paris,

back to Versailles at seven in the morning,

a few hours sleep, go to mass,

have a (speaks in foreign language), do what you have to do,

and then get ready to go out for the next evening.

It was pretty normal teenager, I have to say.

I mean, it wasn't terribly shocking, what she did.

What Marie Antoinette likes most

about these balls is the anonymity they afford her.

She can be someone else

and take part in certain conversations,

but she must understand that despite her little black mask,

as soon as she enters the ballroom, everyone recognizes her,

but they all pretend not to to please her.

(speaking in foreign language)
("Rondo alla Turca")

One night in January 1774,

she meets a visiting Swedish student of the opera ball,

and he really doesn't recognize her.

For a brief moment, she truly escapes Versailles

and her tiresome role of dauphine.

Axel von Fersen was such a romantic figure.

He was a Swedish count, he was dashing,

he was handsome, he was rich, he was foreign,

which meant that he steered clear, for the most part,

of all the petty palace intrigues,

and he fit so well into Marie Antoinette's

intimate circle of friends.

His diary records.

The dauphine talked to me for a long time

without me knowing who she was.

At last, when she was recognized,

everybody pressed 'round her

and at three o'clock, she retired into a box.

I left the ball.

Some weeks later, he departs France,

but a spark had passed between.

(sullen music)

On May the 10th, 1774, a reign of 59 years comes to an end.

Louis XV dies of smallpox.

Hopes for a renewed France free of corruption and decadence

rest with the promise of the young monarchs,

Queen Marie Antoinette, 19 years old,

and King Louis XVI, 20.

The young queen views her accession as a sort of liberation.

Madame, my very dear mother,

although it was God's will

that I be born into the rank I occupy today,

I cannot help but admire how fate chose me

for the most beautiful kingdom in Europe.

At the time, Marie Antoinette believes

that her status as queen will free her from her obligations.

She takes more and more liberties with court etiquette.

However, what might be forgiven a dauphine

cannot be forgiven a queen because from that moment on,

her every action takes on an official nature.

(hooves clopping)

Her first act as queen

is to ask her husband for a palace of her own.

His first act as king is to give her one.

The Petit Trianon, a small chateau

15 minutes from the grand Palace of Versailles.

(Marie laughing)

Marie Antoinette turns the Petit Trianon

into the statement of her independence,

and independence is truly her key word.

She immediately makes it her exclusive estate.

Even the king only visits upon invitation.

After four years in Versailles,

the young queen embraces the Petit Trianon

as a refuge from the rigid obligations of the court.

Here, she will say, I'm no longer queen, I am me.

The luminous, intimate spaces offer possibilities,

a cultural oasis, a laboratory of style.

But absenting herself from the protocol of the court

is not without consequences.

She was playing with fire.

She was turning the courtiers' competition with each other

into a kind of animosity

between the high nobility and herself.

(sullen music)

And that shift would have far-reaching

and disastrous implications for the throne.

(tense music)

(gentle music)

The Petit Trianon is a woman's building.

Louis XV had it built for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour.

On her death, it was occupied

by her successor, Madame du Barry.

It's a jewel of the neoclassical style.

But when Marie Antoinette took possession in 1774,

the jewel was in an inappropriate setting.

The sweet country palace was surrounded by greenhouses

and experimental plantings,

right in the middle of Louis XV's botanical garden.

Louis XV loved botany.

They say he even plowed the fields of the Trianon himself,

proof that he was truly fascinated by the art of gardening.

The Trianon boasted an incredible botanical collection.

Louis XV sent his ships around the world

to bring back plants

that were incredibly beautiful and rare.

The vast garden

held the most prestigious collection in Europe,

over 4,000 varieties of plants

and a world-renowned horticultural school,

but Marie Antoinette didn't want

to see greenhouses when she stepped out of her door.

The first thing she did

when she inherited the estate

was to ask her gardener and her architect

to destroy Louis XV's botanical garden.

This decision is very poorly received

at the time by both men.

How could anyone destroy such rare plants?

One of the world's greatest botanical gardens

was all but erased.

She only keeps one part of Louis XV's garden,

the French garden, which still exists today

with its magnificent pavilion in the center.

Everything else is redone.

She demolishes the experimental greenhouses

and moves the rare plants to the king's garden in Paris,

the ancestor of today's Jardin des Plantes.

Above all, she creates something entirely new.

(peaceful music)

Modern and stylish Marie Antoinette

commanded a garden in the English style, nature idealized

through softly sculpted pastoral landscapes.

Fashionable with English aristocrats for 30 years,

they were just coming into style in France,

replacing the rigorous geometric French gardens

created for Louis XV.

The French garden

is a reminder of the king's authority.

It's a garden that's all about power and authority.

In this style of garden,

plants are aligned with impeccable precision.

The French garden is created by a garden architect

who wants nature to bend to his will.

In a landscaped or English-style garden,

the designer becomes a poet.

He imagines nature, not as it is,

but as he would like it to be.

This new style was the expression

of a new spirit of the age

that Marie Antoinette responded to almost instinctively.

It's important to understand

that at the time, people were turning away

from the classical Louis XV style garden.

Rousseau is a big influence.

In Julie, or the New Heloise,

he describes a new style of idyllic garden,

an Eden with ancient-style temples

and winding irregular paths.

Rousseau preached natural simplicity,

but he also preached social equality.

Amused aristocrats read him as a romantic.

Future revolutionaries read him as a political manifesto.

The idea that somehow the French queen

was taking the radical social ideas

of an enlightenment philosopher

and incorporating them into her new lifestyle

at her private estate was one of the many ironies

of Marie Antoinette's position

as a harbinger of revolution almost in spite of herself.

Marie Antoinette put the project

in the hands of Richard Mique, the king's architect,

and the chief gardener Antoine Richard.

Plans were drawn up by the Count of Caramon,

a gifted amateur gardener

and personally approved by the queen.

(tense music)

Atmosphere and sentiment were inspired by Hubert Robert,

the acclaimed painter of picturesque landscapes.

(peaceful music)

Marie Antoinette both commissions

and oversees the work on the Trianon gardens.

She is personally involved in this new project.

She knows what she wants and doesn't hesitate

to have a grove or an ornament reshaped 10 times

in order to get it right.

Nothing is natural on the Trianon grounds.

There isn't a single body of water on the property

until Marie Antoinette sets foot in the garden.

She moves around tens of thousands of cubic meters of earth.

She creates hills, ponds, and even lakes.

The scale is unprecedented, and hundreds of people

are paid over a six or seven year period

to make Queen Marie Antoinette's dream come true.

(peaceful music)

Those who know

the Petit Trianon from before are shocked.

They include the Duke of Croy,

who had not set foot in the Petit Trianon

since the death of Louis XV.

In his memoirs, he recounts, I thought I was crazy.

I thought I was dreaming

when I saw Europe's biggest greenhouse

replaced by rivers, rocks, and hills.

In her garden,

the queen trades power for romance,

and she embraces the fashion

for the antique past, the golden age.

Her garden will be a pastoral arcadia.

Several fabrique are built.

These are small architectural elements

designed to decorate and punctuate the landscape.

This is Marie Antoinette's touch of genius.

Foremost among the extraordinary fabrique

in the queen's new garden is the Temple of Love,

an ersatz Roman temple to Cupid.

There is a harmony

between the temple's width, its height,

and the arch of the dome.

Everything's absolutely perfect.

The architecture beautifully represents

the aesthetic ideals of antiquity.

(peaceful music)

And placing this temple on an island

in the middle of the river is an absolute stroke of genius.

Overlooking an artificial lake

from a manmade hill, the Belvedere

is an octagonal stone structure in the neoclassical style.

Doors and windows open on all sides

to form an open-air music salon.

The luminous interior is adorned with flowery arabesques,

delicate echoes of the garden that surrounds it.

This is Marie Antoinette's style,

extraordinary elegance, neoclassical,

very Louis XVI, one might say, but in miniature.

And very floral with lots and lots of flowers and garlands.

(peaceful music)

The flowery motifs create a harmony

between house and garden, between inside and outside.

(speaking in foreign language)

She brings this landscape

and the Temple of Love seen through the windows

inside the room, and conversely, the decorative patterns

on the furniture and artworks

are inspired by the surrounding nature.

(speaking in foreign language)

Wild cornflowers, sunflowers, pine cones, and bucolic motifs

blend with her very favorite feminine motifs,

such as pearls, medallions, and bows.

The masterpiece is, of course, the furniture,

decorated with the wheat motif

in the queen's bedroom at the Petit Trianon.

The woodwork is by Jacob.

It is painted in natural tones with jasmine flowers.

Miraculously, these pieces are still upholstered

in the original silk.

Dispersed in the Revolution,

the furniture returned to Versailles 150 years later.

The rare silk coverings still intact.

To decorate her new rooms,

Marie Antoinette commissions numerous works of art

from among the king's best artists.

She personally and carefully selects all the fabrics,

the tapestries, and porcelain vases from Sevres,

making her one of the greatest art patrons of the century.

(anxious music)

The artisans now renovating the queen's house

are the heirs of the masters of the past.

They are specialists in technique,

but also in the histories and traditions of their crafts.

The French luxury industry was formed under Louis XIV

to further his prestige.

His Minister Colbert quipped that fashion is to France

what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain.

In the Paris of Marie Antoinette,

30% of workers were employed in luxury trades.

The work requires tastes, the finest of materials,

the most delicate gestures.

And it costs a lot of money.

(thunder rumbling)

(tense music)

When news of her expenses becomes public,

Marie Antoinette's extravagance is blamed

for the shortfall in the royal treasury.

In reality, her expenses

are a tiny part her the national debt,

but this first inkling of discontent darkens her success.

Her garden and palace are beautiful,

but they cost her the sympathy of her subjects.

(light music)

Over 300,000 pounds was spent to transform

the queen's garden, the price of a fine chateau.

Similar sums could be found

on the gaming tables of Petit Trianon at private parties.

(Marie laughing)

Marie Antoinette loves to gamble.

The problem is that in her younger days,

she played a hellish game, winning and losing colossal sums.

(whispering in foreign language)

In 1776, Mercy estimates

the queen's loses at 400,000 pounds,

an unfathomable sum of money.

(speaking in foreign language)

She also spends a great deal on jewelry.

In 1776, she purchases a pair of dangling earrings

with six enormous diamonds from the jewelers to the crown

for 460,000 pounds.

Louis XVI yet again agrees to pay this astronomical sum

from his personal treasury, but on a four-year credit.

This decision will be used against him,

making him look like a week king dominated by his wife.

(gentle music)

But Marie Antoinette was not seeking power.

She was seeking escape

from the empty formal role of French queen.

Ironically, she would hide in plain sight.

Fashion was a kind of play, it was dressing up.

It was being frivolous, it was being whimsical.

It was loosening the strictures

of court formality and protocol,

but fashion gave her a form of public notoriety,

a form of empowerment that she could lay claim to

and really shape the contours of her own identity.

Marie Antoinette's style

was celebrated in early fashion prints.

She was the first supermodel, a true fashion plate.

Marie Antoinette effectively decided

she was gonna make herself

this incredibly splendid, riveting physical object

for all the world to gawk at and to admire.

(tense music)

In fact, Marie Antoinette wasn't fashionable.

She was fashion.

To the queen's good fortune,

the French fashion industry was in full transformation.

Long-restricted to the role of seamstress,

women had taken on the new profession

of marchandes de modes.

Rose Bertin, the most talented and audacious,

would become her trusted collaborator,

her Minister of Fashion.

The two women are a perfect match.

On one hand, Marie Antoinette loves constant style changes

and is dazzled by the designer's never-ending creations.

On the other hand, Rose Bertin, with her flare for business,

sees Marie Antoinette as a rich woman in the public eye

and an ideal model for her new fashions.

Marchandes de modes were not allowed

to make or sell new dresses,

but created accessories and adornments.

Their clients could dramatically

change their look from day to day

by adding flounces to their skirts

or ornaments to their hair.

Women's fashion became a means of self-expression.

But it was shocking to have the queen set the style.

Previously, French fashions

were created by women of low birth and low morals,

actresses, prostitutes, and royal mistresses.

Louis XVI has no mistress.

In a tragic twist of irony,

this will be held against the two of me,

first, against Louis XVI who appears weak,

provoking the people's contempt,

then against Marie Antoinette herself.

The favorite of the French monarch plays an important role,

providing the people with an escape.

First, she fascinates them, then she's idolized,

then hated, and eventually, disgraced.

Ultimately, Marie Antoinette, always in the limelight,

dressed in the latest fashions,

acts like a royal mistress herself.

Maria Theresa admonishes her in a letter.

Why are you acting like Pompadour and du Barry?

You are not his mistress, you are the queen.

Marie Antoinette, Bertin,

and the hairdresser, Leonard

push the boundaries of taste and style to the limit

with their most daring creating, the pouf.

The pouf was the ultimate flexible,

easily-changeable fashion accessory.

It was a towering edifice of hair

where the wearer's hair was kind of teased up

and piled and twisted around an understructure

of chicken wire and horse hair padding

and then different decorative objects

were placed in the pouf.

(light music)

The pouf was a miniature theater

and a personal billboard.

It might communicate sentiments, announce personal events,

or celebrate political causes.

Opinions were worn on the head.,

like the pouf in honor of a French naval victory

in the controversial American Revolutionary War.

So, Marie Antoinette wearing a replica

of a victorious French ship

to a big public opera ball in Paris

was her way of essentially endorsing her husband's decision

to enter the American Revolution,

and it was her way of signaling to the French people

that this was a decision

that they should all feel good about.

Inevitably, the extravagant

and impractical fashion became the target of ridicule,

as it was adopted by women of every class

and spread to England and Spain.

There are even accounts

of women who couldn't get into

their English-style carriages with low roofs,

who had to travel on their knees

with their head sticking out the window.

Unfortunately, living by the pouf

also meant dying by the pouf.

The poufs Marie Antoinette favored

happened to be covered in powder

and flour was a key ingredient

in the pomade that held her hairstyles in place.

By walking around with these conspicuous

flour-covered hairstyles

at at time of grain and flour shortages,

she looked like she was wearing on her head

food stuffs that her subjects couldn't afford to eat.

(tense music)

Alerted by her ambassador spy,

the Count of Mercy, Maria Theresa tries to regain control.

When will you finally be yourself?

It is degrading for a queen to dress herself up

and even more so if this involves such considerable sums

and in such times.

I cannot be silent.

Loving you for what is good in you and not to flatter you.

Behind all the urgent pleas

and encouragements of Maria Theresa was the fact

that Marie Antoinette and Louis had not produced an heir.

After seven years, the marriage was still unconsummated.

The Queen of France has one job,

to produce an heir to the throne.

Maria Theresa fears her daughter may be repudiated,

which would lead to the collapse of a strategy for France.

If the marriage still isn't consummated,

it must mean that they are simply too different.

It's a sort of casting error.

They have very different tastes.

They have opposite personalities.

She is cheerful, and he's rather gloomy.

Even physically, they are opposites.

Louis XVI is a huge man of six foot, five,

and she is graceful and delicate.

(tense music)

Rumors abound that the king

is physically deformed or intimidated by a queen

whose eccentric tastes are signs of decadence.

Maria Theresa dispatches her son, Emperor Joseph II,

Marie Antoinette's brother, to resolve the crisis.

Oh.

A delicate discussion with the king

reveals certain failures in the tutoring of his tutors.

(speaking in foreign language)

And a vigorous scolding of his sister

confirms her in her duties.

Joseph reports to his brother Leopold,

problem diagnosed, a timid king, mission accomplished.

He has strong, fine erections.

He introduces his member

and stays there without moving for maybe two minutes,

then he pulls out, still hard,

without having released himself, and says goodnight.

He should be whipped

to make him ejaculate in anger like a donkey.

My sister is hardly feisty when it comes to this.

They're two bumbling fools.

I am the happiest I have ever been in my life.

It is already more than a week

since my marriage was consummated, and again since then,

and yesterday, even more fully than the first time.

I don't think I am yet with child,

but at last, I can hope to be, any time now.

(Marie sighs)

Eight months later,

the queen informs her mother

that she's pregnant with the king's child.

(Marie sighs)

(peaceful music)

Spring brings the queen's garden to life

under the benevolent gaze of Cupid.

Verdant poetry, bursts of color,

her garden, the refuge she had dreamed of, embraces her.

She is seduced by her own creation.

And Marie Antoinette welcomes an old friend.

After four years of absence,

Axel von Fersen visits to pay his respects.

She was a dauphine with no important.

When he came back, she was the queen,

and of course, he was still very handsome,

she was still very beautiful,

and they still liked each other a lot.

And it's within a fairly short period of time

that we start getting the rumors at court

that she was in love with him.

They had both fallen

under the enchantment of the garden,

a theater set, carefully arranged for a love story.

There was gossip at Versailles.

People were starting to talk about this relationship

that she was in love with him.

He was always everywhere with her.

So, she would have probably thought,

if I send him away for a few months to a year,

it will all die down,

and then we'll see what happens when he comes back.

I doubt that they thought it would be three years.

He was away for three whole years

in the American War of Independence.

(gentle music)

The queen's garden has served its purpose.

She has fallen in love in it.

December the 19th, 1778,

the corridors of Versailles erupt in pandemonium.

At long last, Marie Antoinette goes into labor.

Courtiers rush to her bedside.

It is chaos in the apartments.

Everyone climbs on the tables and up the curtains

to get a better view.

It's the middle of winter and the air is thick,

but since everything has been sealed against draft,

the windows can't be opened.

The birth is a public event because in a hereditary monarchy

where power is transmitted through blood,

everyone must be certain that the child

has not been substituted at birth.

It's a girl, Princess Marie Therese,

called Madame Royale,

but all the court bears witness

that after eight years of marriage,

Marie Antoinette has still not produced an heir.

Four months after the birth,

Marie Antoinette falls sick.

She starts shivering, develops canker sores,

and comes down with the measles.

So, she goes to the Trianon

where she surrounds herself with unlikely nurses,

her favorites who are all infatuated with her.

Quarantined with witty and charming young men,

Marie Antoinette reconvenes

the Society of the Queen and Petit Trianon.

This is when rumors of infidelity begin.

People start to wonder if these men

who are alone with Marie Antoinette at the Trianon

are merely friends, or are they special friends?

And why does the queen have such a need to isolate herself?

She must have something to hide.

(speaking in foreign language)

(tense music)

Rather than challenge the accusations,

Marie Antoinette employs a system

to close off the view into her study.

It only increase the curiosity

and the intensity of the rumors.

The root of the problem

is the way Marie Antoinette uses the Trianon.

She behaves like the lady of castle

and closes the doors of the Trianon.

Her permission is required to visit.

It's quite a paradox.

Versailles is open to all.

Anyone who wants to can get inside.

All one needs is a sword and a hat.

At the Trianon, you need the queen's special token.

This is a coin that's presented to the guard

who may or may not grant you access to the estate.

The Court of Versailles doesn't appreciate the idea

that they might be refused entry

and hatred toward Marie Antoinette continues to grow.

(dramatic music)

Starting in 1780, those few selected

for entrance to the Petit Trianon

were offered a new amusement,

a theater built to the queen's orders.

Marie Antoinette always adored music, theater, and dance.

Even as a child in Vienna,

she performed with her brothers and sisters

in the family's private theater.

Again, she entrusts Richard Mique

with this new project.

He builds her a smaller paper theater

in shades of blue and gold.

Why a small theater made of paper?

Because everything is in wood painted to look like marble.

Even the sculptures are made of papier-mache

instead of stone.

(peaceful music)

The decor was splendid,

but completely ephemeral.

Rumors of precious stones embedded in the walls

were completely unfounded.

However, this tiny theater

is equipped with sophisticated machinery for set changes,

making it a sort of miniature version

of the great Royal Opera of Versailles.

(light music)

She invited

the great troupes of Paris to perform,

the Opera, the Comedie Francaise, the Comedie Italienne.

(gears grinding)

The backdrops were conventional,

a temple, a rich salon, a rustic cottage,

a garden, a dark forest.

Just a few sets accommodated

the entire repertory of the 18th century.

Soon, Marie Antoinette took the stage herself.

Marie Antoinette is accompanied on stage

by what is known as the troupe of lords,

which includes her friends,

but also some of the court nobles,

including Artois and Provence, Louis XVI's two brothers.

They perform in front of 100 people,

an audience made up exclusively of the queen's guests.

(speaking in foreign language)

When there aren't enough guests,

the servants are allowed to watch the performances

from a box screened off by a lattice.

Scandal ensued,

not due to including the servants,

but for excluding the nobles.

The court VIPs,

who under normal circumstances

would follow the queen at all times, are refused entry.

The ladies in waiting

aren't necessarily invited to these performances.

This is something totally new at Versailles,

a queen of France who completely disappears from public life

whenever she is at the Trianon.

(peaceful music)

In the privacy of her domain,

Marie Antoinette creates a parallel court in her own orbit

with a relaxed etiquette

and courtiers chosen by affinity rather than birth.

But in keeping the court at a distance,

Marie Antoinette is closing herself in.

The Petit Trianon, its garden becomes a world in itself.

This is a queen who has her own chateau.

She creates regulations in her own name

proclaimed by the queen,

when normally, this is the king's prerogative.

The origin of the crisis

is this two-headed aspect of the court.

(speaking in foreign language)

Aristocratic factions

opposed to Marie Antoinette

disseminate extravagant tales of debauchery,

assigning the German vice, lesbianism,

to Marie Antoinette and de Polignac.

The sexual slander had political aims.

If she had royal mistresses,

then the king must be weak, impotent, inconsequential.

But Marie Antoinette, nestled in her secret garden,

was impervious to the liables.

(speaking in foreign language)

(women laughing)

For the back-to-nature lifestyle

that Marie Antoinette sought to cultivate,

Rose Bertin pioneered a style

that became the signature look for the Petit Trianon.

This was the chemise or gaulle dress,

a kind of white cotton or muslin almost slip dress

that was relatively unstructured,

but it was a very simple, comfortable style.

Even so simple a dress

could lead to controversy if worn by Marie Antoinette.

A portrait by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun

presented at the Salon of 1783 proved the point.

By rights, Marie Antoinette should have appeared

in her portrait with all of the accoutrement of royalty,

an ermine robe, a scepter, a crown.

Instead, she posed in gaulle with no marker whatsoever

indicating her royal status.

There were pamphlets published

saying that Marie Antoinette had tricked herself out

like a servant girl, that she looked like a wench

serving lemonade at a roadside stand in the country.

(light music)

To protect it from the outraged public,

the painting was removed from the Salon.

Vigee Le Brun quickly painted

the exact same portrait of the queen

wearing a sumptuous blue silk court dress

where the figure in the painting

looked every inch the queen.

This painting was meant to mollify the French public,

but the damage had been done.

It's paradoxical.

Marie Antoinette in the 1770s,

at the moment of the flour shortages

was criticized by her subjects

for seeming to spend too much money.

Now, she was dressing down,

and now the public was saying that was unworthy of a queen,

that this was undignified,

that was an insult to the institution

she was supposed to represent.

As usual, the queen was detested but imitated.

Women took to the comfortable style.

Little white dresses were everywhere.

But adding fuel for her detractors,

the fashion used imported cotton,

driving the domestic silk industry into a tailspin.

(anxious music)

The silk industry was one

of the most important luxury trades in France.

Only silk was worn at Versailles

and the bourgeoisie aped the fashion.

All the world wore French silk,

but suddenly, thousands of jobs were lost.

Rumors spread that the Austrian

was out to destroy the French economy.

Only a few silk producers exist today,

such as De Klerk, still producing trimmings

for the house of the queen,

copied from their vast archive of ancient patterns.

(bell chiming)

In November 1780, the biweekly letters

Marie Antoinette receive from Vienna stopped.

Her mother, Maria Theresa was dead.

No more would she be spied on, no more would she be guided.

(Marie sighs)

11 months later, mourning at an end,

the queen gives birth to her second child, a son.

After 11 years of marriage,

the French throne has its heir, Louis Joseph,

named Marie Antoinette's brother.

This birth saves Marie Antoinette

because she is now untouchable,

having finally fulfilled her duty as Queen of France.

(gentle music)

With the death of her mother

and the birth of her son, a change comes over the queen.

Celebrated by her people, her position is secure.

At 27 years old, sure in her authority,

she looks out further in the garden,

imagines rustic pleasures and embarks on a new project.

(tense music)

(speaking in foreign language)

As usual, Richard Mique is recruited.

He will, again, build a sort of theater,

but this time, the stage will stretch over several acres,

encompassing an entire village.

She wants a village.

She doesn't want to be queen of France.

She wants to be queen of a small village,

and in fact, Marie Antoinette's estate

is the perfect representation

of the small typical local village in the 18th century.

Again, Marie Antoinette

was not inventing on her own.

Several moguls already had villages on their estates.

She visited Chantilly

where the Count of Conde's model village

had seven rustic cottages in the Norman style.

Marie Antoinette thinks big.

She doesn't want a few thatch cottages.

She wants a whole village.

And the whole village

is organized around a pond

in a sort of amphitheater, a semicircle

because the village is designed, above all,

as a new garden decor.

Work begins in 1783.

It will take three years

to complete the 12 buildings,

but the village is hardly more than a stage set.

When Marie Antoinette commissions a village,

the architect understands that this is her dream,

so he designs a dream village.

Everyone is instantly charmed by its simplicity and beauty.

(peaceful music)

After 200 years, the dreams still resonates.

It looks like a rustic retreat,

but it's just a few kilometers

from the Palace of Versailles.

Nothing here is quite what it seems.

(speaking in foreign language)

The Hamlet is a kind of a chateau,

but a deconstructed version with several structures.

It's a whole new vision of royal architecture.

(speaking in foreign language)

Scattered small buildings

give the illusion of a working village,

a boudoir and dressing room for the queen,

a guard house disguised as a peasant cottage,

a fishery,

a dairy where fresh milk was served in the finest porcelain,

a dovecote,

just across the river, a working farm

with sheep and goats to serve the dairy

and fresh eggs for the queen,

a decorative mill whose wheel never turned.

So, this construction

is essentially made for Marie Antoinette

in line with the tastes of the time.

It was built for the queen

and not necessarily built to last over time.

The centerpiece, the house of the queen,

shows the effects of weather, time, neglect, and revolution.

Marie Antoinette spent just three years here.

For the better part of its existence, it has laid abandoned.

The Queen's Hamlet

is clearly the most fragile construction

in all of Versailles,

but it's also the one that has received the least care.

This estate should definitely be maintained

with a great deal of subtly and intelligence.

It was once a place for daydreaming.

We must still be able to dream

and lose ourselves here today.

(peaceful music)

Like every dream,

the Hamlet is built on muddy ground,

without foundations out of flimsy

and perishable materials, completely ephemeral,

and like a dream, it persists.

The Hamlet is first represented

in a remarkable series of albums

commissioned by the queen as gifts for favored visitors.

It's presented as the crowning achievement

in the romantic transformation of her domain.

(speaking in foreign language)

The Hamlet was conceived

as the receptacle of the garden.

It receives the garden's beauty and reflects it back,

but the style is rustic, as opposed to the English garden

with its chic elegant construction.

The earlier fabrique of the English garden

looked to the past or to brute nature for inspiration.

They evoke an antique golden age.

But the Hamlet is a contemporary pastoral village,

a golden age in the present.

The foreground figures are active, enterprising.

In the other prints,

the figures have their backs to the viewer.

All regard the monuments,

which fill the space like stage sets.

Everyone is watching, waiting for the show to begin.

(women laughing)

Fersen arrived back in France in June 1783.

His feelings hadn't changed,

and we know that from a letter that he sent to his sister.

He wrote, I cannot belong to the only person

I want to belong to, the only person who truly loves me,

and so I will not marry.

She wasn't gonna let him go again.

If I let him go, that's it, it's over.

She had a son, so she provided the heir to throne,

so she'd done her duty as queen,

and that's when they became lovers.

He will stand by her side

as the Revolution rips their lives apart,

but he will fail to save his damsel in distress.

(tense music)

(Marie sighs)

(sullen music)

With the Revolution, romanticism will take a new turn.

The golden age will be looked for in the future,

and no matter how modern they might seem,

Fersen and Marie Antoinette will belong to the past.

Only her dream,

a village endlessly falling into ruin, survives her.

It has deteriorated

mainly because it was neglected for 150 years.

It's our responsibility

to preserve its admirable authenticity.

It is virtually in ruins,

and we must act before it disappears.

We're lucky to have incredible documentation on royal homes.

We know the details of various building processes.

We have drawings and designs.

But above and beyond the documentation,

the primary document is the monument itself.

(speaking in foreign language)

Every restoration is an act of archeology.

The house speaks to several periods,

restored by Napoleon for his wife Marie Louise,

repaired under Napoleon III for his Empress Eugenia,

always undergoing changes in style and function.

The Queen's Hamlet

is associated with Marie Antoinette,

but its story doesn't end with her.

(speaking in foreign language)

Versailles was impacted by the French Revolution,

an important part of French history.

The restorations and alterations carried out under Napoleon

are also key historic elements that should not be forgotten.

In fact, the building's state of abandon

over the past century and a half

is undoubtedly its most long-lasting historical feature.

Deciding among these difference styles and layouts

is an architectural choice.

For some six generations,

the Queen's Hamlet has stood crumbling and abandoned.

No one alive has ever seen

that house of the queen furnished.

At the Revolution, the Hamlet became a den of thieves.

Marie Antoinette's furnishings

were destroyed or auctioned off.

The inventory of Marie Louise's furniture,

installed some 15 years later,

is the only guide to the interior decoration.

(speaking in foreign language)

We have managed to really recapture

the spirit of Empress Marie Louise's Hamlet,

which, it must be said,

did not betray the spirit of Marie Antoinette's.

She was, perhaps, a little less elegant

because the empire's style is stiffer

with thicker wooden structures,

but overall, the feminine, antique, graceful,

and flowery spirit of Marie Antoinette's Hamlet

can be found in Marie Louise's Hamlet as well.

On the exterior,

traces of Marie Antoinette's decor still exist.

As for the exterior decorations,

we have known all along that the new building

built for Marie Antoinette by Mique

was painted like a theater set.

The work was done by the same craftsmen

who created the queen's stage sets,

intentionally making them look aged over time.

(tense music)

The Hamlet's entire set design

was conceived to be viewed from the other side of the pond,

in other words,

as far as 100 meters from certain structures.

Some visual effects must be exaggerated

and contrived in order to be seen.

When I met earlier with the restorers,

I used these very terms in order to match

the original provisions for each construction.

Richard Mique gave a final country touch

to each cottage, adding small gardens.

Today's gardeners carefully maintain the vegetable plots,

keeping them in their original condition.

Our main objective

is to restore the Queen's Hamlet to its original state

by replanting the garden according to the lists

of flowers and vegetables that were selected at the time.

If Marie Antoinette were ever to come back one day

and I were to be standing next to her,

I would love her to compliment me

on how well I took care of her garden.

I really like the idea that a dreamer

could feel they have traveled back two centuries in time.

(peaceful music)

In 1785, her second son,

little Louis Charles, the future Louis XVII, is born.

Marie Antoinette is a real model of maternal love.

She demonstrates her affection for her children,

both in private and in public.

She coins nicknames for all of them,

Mousseline, Madame Serieuse, Chou d'Amour,

and gets down on all fours to play blind man's bluff

and other games with them.

When she turned 30, Marie Antoinette's approach

to the way she dressed really changed in a dramatic way.

She was a mother of young children.

Her complexion, though by all accounts,

as beautiful as ever, was, in her mind,

starting to fade a bit.

Some of the portraits Vigee Le Brun painted of her

between 1785 and 1787 really showed

Marie Antoinette's shift to a more mature style.

She looks like a woman who's comfortable

with her privileged station

but who isn't making a big show of her splendor anymore.

The Hamlet took on the spirit of a homey refuge

where she took personal responsibility

for raising her children.

(singing in foreign language)

It was an imaginary reproduction of the warmth and freedom

of her own childhood family life,

and also, an attempt to redeem her reputation.

Educating the future king of France was a public service

fully worthy of her role as queen.

(singing in foreign language)

Marie Antoinette makes herself

available to her children.

She writes that when she denies them something,

she always provides an explanation they can understand,

and with true psychological insight,

she records their personalities

and their childhood troubles in great detail.

For example, she notes that excessive sternness

only makes Louis Charles dig his heels in

and that despite his gentle character,

he is unable to say he is sorry,

but when he does, it's with tears in his eyes.

She gives them a modern enlightened education.

And although she, herself, hated reading as a child,

she makes them read La Fontaine, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

She also oversees their spiritual education

and teaches them values.

(cowbell ringing)
(cow mooing)

Marie Antoinette believes the Hamlet has educational value.

She's intent on showing them

what she believes to be the realities of peasant life,

but the Hamlet is just a stage set.

(speaking in foreign language)

(rooster crows)

(both laughing)

(peaceful music)

But for critics,

educating the royal children in a model theatrical farm

showed a dangerous disconnect

with the real peasants of the countryside mired in famine.

What does Marie Antoinette really want?

She wants to be happy.

She is searching for happiness

and this is a modern concept, once again.

Rousseau expands upon it in his work Confessions,

this idea that true happiness is found

in enjoying the small things in day-to-day life,

a happy family, a happy marriage,

happiness in friendships and in motherhood.

The problem is that happiness has never been

the job description for a queen of France.

Marie Antoinette's

domestic pleasure at the Hamlet was only achieved

by turning her back on everything outside her domain,

the people clamoring for bread,

the aristocratic factions

plotting to influence an indecisive monarch.

Louis XVI was a weak king.

The monarchy was weak and falling apart,

so there were plenty of members,

even of the royal family itself,

that were hoping that maybe Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

could somehow be pushed out of the way

to make room for a better and stronger king.

(gentle music)

As the queen withdraws into bucolic life,

balls are less frequent.

She even resolves to abandon the theater,

planning one last performance

with her troupe (speaks in foreign language),

the Barber of Seville by Beaumarchais.

(peaceful music)

But the king knows what the queen does not,

Beaumarchais is a subversive.

It takes months of entreaties

before he allows the performance,

but finally, rehearsals begin

with Marie Antoinette in the role of the ingenue, Rosine.

In the middle of rehearsals,

a scandal breaks that will force the queen

back into the public eye.

It involves a diamond necklace of astronomical value,

an ambitious and venal cardinal, and elaborate hoax.

It's called the affair of the queen's necklace,

but the necklace never belonged to the queen.

The diamond necklace affair

is a mysterious business straight out of play by Moliere.

It involves Cardinal de Rohan,

a ridiculous character who is enamored with the queen

but is upset because she disapproves of him.

He falls prey to Madame de la Motte,

a con artist and unscrupulous adventurer.

The tale revolves around a nighttime meeting

where Cardinal de Rohan is introduced by Madame de la Motte

to a mysterious woman dressed in a gaulle.

In the darkness, he takes her to be the queen.

Letters follow under the name of Marie Antoinette

asking him to procure a necklace for her.

The jewelers deliver the necklace

to Cardinal de Rohan who gives it to Madame de la Motte

to give to the queen.

Once she has the necklace,

Madame de la Motte flees to England with the diamonds.

The jeweler who made it astounded the queen and king

when he let them know that he would need to be paid

for the necklace bought on Marie Antoinette's behalf.

The queen, who has no idea what's going on,

dismisses the whole thing, saying,

you must be dreaming, you're crazy.

Finally, little by little,

the cardinal realizes that he's been played,

and a scandal breaks.

The king, furious to have the name of the queen

associated with the scandal, has the cardinal arrested.

An investigation is launched

by the Parliament in Paris.

Madame de la Motte is rapidly apprehended.

This proves a terrible trap for the queen.

The coup de grace comes

when Parliament announces its verdict

and acquits Cardinal de Rohan.

Crucially and disastrously for Marie Antoinette,

the fake queen, who hornswoggled the Cardinal de Rohan,

was dressed in a gaulle,

and the gaulle was this sartorial smoking gun

in the case that was brought against her

in the court of public opinion.

It was thought that because Marie Antoinette

was the kind of woman who would run around

in the gardens in a nightgown after dark,

a myth that her time at the Petit Trianon

had certainly fostered,

she somehow seemed like she was guilty in the swindle,

even though she had had no knowledge of it

and had had nothing to do with it.

The affair is the great

media sensation of the 18th century.

The press mercilessly inflames the public against her.

If the cardinal is innocent, the queen must be guilty.

The pamphleteers go to town,

extremely violent caricatures are published

attacking the queen's expenditure

and her private life as well.

She's accused of having affairs with both men and women,

of being a harlot.

The drawings are incredibly offensive

and some truly pornographic images are passed around.

(somber music)

But the press is simply a relay.

These accusations are coming from much higher up,

directly from the court and even from the royal family.

Madame Adelaide, one of the Louis XV's daughters,

coins the nickname, the Austrian,

which will follow Marie Antoinette to the gallows,

and the Count du Provence, her own brother-in-law

openly questions Louis XVI's paternity.

And the court, doing its best each day

to further the slander and discredit the queen,

never imagines the political consequences,

which will eventually lead to its own destruction.

(sullen music)

In July 1786,

with her popularity at an all-time low,

Marie Antoinette gives birth

to her last child, Sophie Beatrix.

Just 11 months later, the infant dies.

In the monumental family portrait by Vigee Le Brun,

the little princess is memorialized by an empty crib.

Her brother points to the void.

She is devastated

by the loss of her last child in 1787,

but at court, no one understands

how she could be so saddened over just a baby.

But the court shows much more interest

in the health of her first son, the heir to the throne.

The ordeals multiply for this loving mother,

and now the health of the dauphin,

heir to the throne, is declining.

He suffers from bone tuberculosis and has stopped growing.

The anatomist Petit makes him a sort of corset

that he has to wear every day,

which causes him terrible pain.

(sullen music)

One year before the Revolution,

Marie Antoinette takes her family

on a last summer retreat to the Petit Trianon.

She is surrounded by her society of friends,

but the mood is somber.

There are few festivities.

Her heart is not in it.

Political realities can no longer be kept at a distance.

The Petit Trianon, like the Queen's Hamlet,

isolates Marie Antoinette more and more from reality.

Even what she sees from her window

is just a sort of theater.

Holed up inside her estate,

she doesn't see the ideological revolution taking place.

She doesn't hear of the new ideas

promoted by the men of the Enlightenment,

nor does she hear the rumblings in the capital

growing closer to Versailles.

(tense music)
(thunder rumbling)

In the mid-1780s, the French treasury's accounting books

were made public for the first time,

and the French people were shocked to discover

that the crown was running a gigantic deficit.

Marie Antoinette, even though she was living a bucolic life

mostly away from the splendor and formality of court,

became a convenient lightning rod

for public anger about how broke the crown was.

She was being reviled in the French press as Madame Deficit.

Marie Antoinette is not

just accused of reckless spending, she's accused of causing

the kingdom's catastrophic financial state.

(thunder rumbling)

Marie Antoinette

reduces her spending at home.

Gambling and games are forbidden in the salons.

She cuts back on the stables.

She lets go of Madame Bertin.

But these efforts go virtually unnoticed

amidst the general turmoil, and it is too late anyway.

Too late is the phrase

that will describe all of her efforts.

(tense music)

The financial crisis

was only worsened by an indecisive king.

Counselors pulled him in opposing directions.

The government ground to a halt.

A vacuum was forming in the heart of the monarchy,

a vacuum that would inevitably

draw Marie Antoinette back to the chateau.

The queen has dishonored herself.

This is how the French people see Marie Antoinette.

The queen is the target of all accusations.

She has become a martyr queen,

which is how the myth is born.

All the blame is put on her, much more than on Louis XVI.

The queen can no longer

turn her back on the growing crisis.

For the first time, she enters politics,

inviting Jacques Necker, a popular finance minister

dismissed by the king years earlier,

to sort out the problems of the treasury.

(Marie sighs)

A letter addressed to the Austrian ambassador

finds her resigned but determined.

I have written to Mr. Necker,

asking him to come here tomorrow.

There is no time to waste.

The sooner he begins working, the better.

The situation is urgent.

I tremble, forgive me my weakness.

It is I who seek to bring him back.

It is my fate to bring bad luck,

and if the infernal machinations cause him to fail again

or to weaken the authority of the king,

they will hate me even more.

Necker will not prove the savior she hopes for.

(attendees chattering)

The Estates General, a national convention

called by the king to resolve the issue of taxation,

convenes in May 1789.

It will become the vehicle for revolution.

(sullen music)

Just one month after the sitting of the Estates General,

on the night of June the 3rd, 1789,

personal tragedy compounds political crisis.

The Dauphin Louis Joseph,

Marie Antoinette seven-year-old son, dies.

The Estates General refuses to acknowledge the king's pain.

There is no pause in the proceedings.

If there was a single time the king broke his word

and came to the queen's domain unannounced,

it might have been this moment,

when the outlines of their shared destiny first took shape

in the gathering gloom.

(tense music)

It's Marie Antoinette's last day at Versailles.

Never again will she see her secret refuge.

After 19 years, she again confronts

the palace she has neither conquered nor escaped.

(Marie sighs)

Of her family, only her daughter, Madame Royale,

will survive the Revolution.

Mique will be guillotined.

Rose Bertin we'll find exiled in London.

Fersen will be murdered

by a Swedish (speaks in foreign language).

And the Hamlet will be saved

by the queen's gardener, Antoine Richard, loyal to the end.

As for the house of the queen,

it will wait over two centuries

for the renovation that revives its original splendor.

(tense music)

(speaking faintly)

(peaceful music)

Like every tale of destiny, Versailles and Marie Antoinette

is a story that does not end.

It is fulfilled.