Marie Antoinette (1922)

The story spans the years 1770 to 1793 and takes place in Vienna, Paris, Versailles, and Varennes. At the wish of her mother, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, Princess Marie Antoinette is to be married into the French royal court. The Dauphin courts her, and before long the shy girl finds herself at Versailles. But the royal court quickly proves morally depraved and deaf to the concerns of ordinary people. A royal son is eventually conceived in the couple’s initially joyless marriage. In this film, the royal couple are shown to be good parents but weak rulers. At last, the common people begin to rise up, as hunger and continuing injustices drive the masses to the barricades. Revolutionary guards capture and detain the royal couple, subjecting them to numerous humiliations and abuses. There is looting and extreme violence; the king’s son is forcibly made to drink schnapps by a drunken cobbler. The revolutionaries lose all restraint. Marie Antoinette’s husband, King Louis XVI, is taken to the scaffold and beheaded without any proof of his guilt. Marie Antoinette, who has become very devout by this point, devotes herself to prayer and beforehand forgives her executioners, who are to become her murderers. Then she, too, dies by the guillotine.