Sophia Coppola’s “Marie-Antoinette” Begins Shooting In Paris
Based on Antonia Fraser’s novel, Oscar-winner Sophia Coppola is writing and directing Marie-Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst as the infamous French queen. The shoot has actually begun at the Chateau de Versailles (with the permission of the French government) and is expected to take 11 weeks, until around June 15th.
Curiously, Marie Antoinette’s well documented relationship with Le Chevalier de Saint-George is not mentioned in Fraser’s novel. Nonetheless, the movie should substantially increase interest in the Saint-George story.
June 8th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
This story is quite intriguing. Is this relationship with the Queen well documented? Where were you able to find such information? I would imagine if they did have an affair no one would have spoken about it.
August 13th, 2005 at 10:32 am
Sophia Coppola has a incredibly skilled eye for capturing beauty, mood and nuance on film. I look forward to her version of “Marie Antoinette”. I can’t imagine anyone else better suited to bring this textured story to the screen in a way that the viewer will feast on the grand-scale beauty, opulence and tragedy of a character and period that changed France forever.
August 13th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Sofia and Kirsten, long time friends, have a love&hate relationship with the French…
- …Coppola is “furious” with legendary actor Alain Delon - after the Frenchman reportedly used her offer of a role in upcoming movie Marie-Antoinette for his own publicity. Lost In Translation director Coppola is currently shooting her film in France and thought she’d found the perfect actor to play monarch Louis XV in screen star Delon. However, Coppola eventually settled on US actor Rip Torn after Delon turned her offer down - leaving Coppola upset. A source tells website Pagesix.Com, “Delon led her to believe she could talk him into accepting the role. He invited her to see him in a play, and she went backstage afterward where there were two photographers waiting to take pictures of her and Delon. Then they went out to dinner. The next morning, the photos of her and Delon appeared in the papers having been obviously pre-planned, with captions saying that Delon had refused Coppola’s offer. He has gone on to say that he can’t be in a movie where he has to wear a wig, but that he would do any contemporary movie she offered him. Obviously, Delon had staged the evening as publicity for himself. Sofia is furious.” A spokesperson for Coppola says, “Sofia is too busy right now to be upset, and she is quite happy with Rip Torn in that role.”
(source WENN, Apr-4th 2005)
- …Dunst, the 23-year-old actress also plays the lead in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming Marie-Antoinette biopic. She predicts the French press will be especially rough on the film, which co-stars Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI.
“And I’m not sure whether historians are going to love our movie,” she says, “but we don’t care.”
(Source Associated Press, Aug-12th 2005)
August 13th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
The relationship between Saint George and Marie-Antoinette is well documented. It is mentioned in the TV documentary “Le Mozart Noir”, http://www.lemozartnoir.com, in Alain Guede’s book “Monsieur De Saint-George”, and J.A Rogers book “World’s Great Men of Color Volume II”. Guede says Saint George was dismmissed because of politics at Versailles and JA Rogers says that Marie Antoinette and Saint George were friends right up to the French Revolution where he handed her a letter with one word in German on it: “Peril”.