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Where history and movies meet
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  • Featured Movies
    • 12 Years a Slave (2013)
    • 1941 (Spielberg) >
      • 1941: Part 2
    • Affair of the Necklace
    • Alice's Restaurant: best of the American counterculture movies?
    • Army of Crime
    • Army of Shadows
    • The Artist >
      • 'The Artist':2
    • Anthropoid: the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, 1942: Four Very Different Movies >
      • Hangmen Also Die: Hollywood meets emigres from Nazi Germany
    • Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    • Battle of the Rails ( La bataille du rail)
    • Belle (2014)
    • Bhowani Junction
    • Blackboard Jungle >
      • Blackboard Jungle Pt.2
    • Carry On Up the Khyber
    • Charlie Wilson's War
    • The City Across the River
    • The Counterculture : best movies about the American counterculture era
    • Custer - two contrasting movie portrayals: "They Died With Their Boots On" and "Little Big Man" >
      • They Died With Their Boots On
      • Stalin and the Movies >
        • Stalin, Disney, Eisenstein, & Ivan the Terrible
      • Death of Stalin
      • Little Big Man (1970)
    • Dark Knight Rises >
      • Dark Knight Rises Pt.2
    • The Deceivers
    • Diplomacy / Diplomatie (2014) movie
    • Dunkirk: Christopher Nolan's epic movie
    • El Cid
    • The Enigma Machine : four movies about the Enigma machine
    • Generation War >
      • Generation War: Jazz and the Swing Kids
      • Generation War: German women and the war
    • The Great Gatsby On the Big Screen
    • Gunga Din
    • A Hard Day's Night: Influences on the Movie
    • Hemingway & Gellhorn >
      • Martha Gellhorn >
        • Women war correspondents
    • Hyde Park on Hudson
    • The Imitation Game (2014) >
      • The Imitation Game Part 2: the truth about Turing and the Bletchley 'Bombe'. >
        • The Imitation Game: Turing, Bletchley and the Colossus >
          • Imitation Game: Turing, Bletchley Park and the Soviet spy
    • The Inner Circle (1991)
    • Is Paris Burning? >
      • Is Paris Burning? General von Choltitz
    • KIng of the Khyber Rifles
    • Kim
    • Léon Morin, Priest
    • Les Miserables (2012) >
      • Les Miserables in Movies: Fantine the grisette >
        • Les Miserables 3: guide to some historical references
    • "Les Misérables": Claude Lelouch updates a classic
    • Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
    • The Long Duel
    • Looking at Lincoln - Spielberg's "Lincoln" & its predecessors and influences >
      • Spielberg's Lincoln
      • Abraham Lincoln: D.W. Griffith's version
      • Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
      • Abe Lincoln in Illinois
    • Mandingo (1975) Dir: Richard Fleischer
    • The Man Who Would Be King
    • Marie Antoinette (2006)
    • Marie-Antoinette / Shadow of the Guillotine
    • Farewell, My Queen
    • Marie Antoinette (1938) >
      • Marie Antoinette (1938) Pt.2
    • Mayerling
    • Midnight in Paris >
      • Midnight in Paris:2 >
        • Midnight in Paris:3
    • The Monuments Men (2014) Dir: George Clooney
    • North West Frontier / Flame Over India
    • La Nuit de Varennes - a post-modern take on a key episode in the French Revolution
    • Le Pere Tranquille (The Quiet Father) 1946
    • Peterloo: MIke Leigh's New Movie >
      • Peterloo2
    • Pompeii in the movies >
      • Pompeii (2014) Paul W.S. Anderson director
    • Rebel Without a Cause
    • Ridicule
    • Scott Fitzgerald Goes to Hollywood
    • Sergeant Rutledge
    • Silence of the Sea
    • Swing Kids (1993)
    • The Train
    • Train to Pakistan
    • Stranglers of Bombay
    • Tonka
    • Tulip Fever
    • Viceroy's House
    • The Vikings
    • Vietnam Westerns: western movies and the Vietnam war
    • Wee Willie Winkie
    • The Wind and the Lion
    • Woman in Gold >
      • Woman in Gold Pt.2: the Vienna Scene in early 20th Century Vienna
    • Un village française: French TV series
    • Waterloo: the movie about Napoleon's final battle
    • Zabriskie Point
  • Places
    • Settings: the North West Frontier
    • Movies Set in the North-West Frontier >
      • Thuggees
    • Movies Set in Paris and Versailles
  • Events
    • Events That Inspired Movies 2
    • French Resistance and Collaboration in World War II: Selected Movies
  • People
    • People Part 2
  • Music
    • Rock Around the Clock
    • Don't Knock the Rock
    • The Girl Can't Help It >
      • Pt2:The Girl Can't Help It
  • Free State of Jones
  • Great Wall (2017)
  • Rogue One & World War 2
  • Hollywood and anti-Americanism in a small country: Amercan movies & their critics in New Zealand 1916 - 1956
    • New Zealanders' Love of Movies 1900s-1956
    • Campaign against Hollywood movies in New Zealand
    • Campaign against HollywoodPt 2
  • Hollywood versus Pinewood Pt2
  • New Zealanders and Movies: the Enigmatic Gordon Mirams: film critic, film censor and public intellectual
  • Aryan Papers: Stanley Kubrick's Proposed Movie

Movies set in Paris and Versailles

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Montmarte, Paris, 1925
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Galerie des Glaces, Versailles Palace.

Versailles: the Setting for 175 (and counting) Movies

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The magnificent palace and gardens at Versailles have been the setting for at least 175 movies. Most of them have nothing to do with history. Versailles has been used as a backdrop for comedies, thrillers, and especially romantic movies. It is used by directors  a recognizable visual code depicting luxury, extravagance, grandeur,  frivolity,luxury, high culture, aristocracy and romantic affairs.However, this site focuses on Versailles as a setting for films about French history, especially those of the late 18th Century revolutionary period.

Three Movies About the Aristocracy and the Court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
These films portray the privileged social and intellectual lives of the 18th Century French aristocracy and suggest their disastrous effects on the nation.

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The 2001 movie 'The Affair of the Necklace' is about a scandal that rocked the court of the royal couple.

Five Movies About Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
At least thirty films have featured the royal couple. The four below each take a different perspective.

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Sofia Coppola's controversial 2006 film compared the culture of the royal court with modern American celebrity culture.
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Released in the Uk and the USA as 'Shadow of the Guillotine' this 1955 movie was made in English and French versions, and starred the glamorous Michele Morgan as Marie Antoinette.
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Made in 1938, this expensive Hollywood biopic was a box-office success and featured Moira Shearer's convincing depiction of the Queen's final months.
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The great French director Jean Renoir's 1938 film about the French revolution focuses on ordinary people, but has a humane attitude towards Louis XVI.
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This 2012 French film, set just before the outbreak of the revolution, looks at Marie Antoinette and the Queen's court from the perspective of one of her maids.

The 1832 Paris Insurrection

The 1832 Paris uprising is often confused with the 1830 revolution. The latter- called the July revolution - succeeded in overthrowing the reactionary Bourbon King Charles X, and replacing him with another monarch, the so-called "citizen king", Louis-Philippe, from the junior Orleans branch of the royal family. This revolution was immortalized by Delacroix' famous painting, "Liberty Leading the People", but posters advertising the musical drama "Les Miserables" and the climactic scene of resistance on the barricades reference the 1830 revolution, not the 1832 revolt which was crushed. The 2012 movie of the musical features the revolt occurring in an incredibly inauthentic  set in which some barricades, flags, a large sculpture of an elephant and a motley crowd of street urchins and zealous students have been dumped in front of the incredibly English Greenwich Museum / Palace.

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Greenwich on the Seine - a scene from Tom Hooper's "Les Miserables", probably the least convincing depiction of Parisian revolt ever put on screen.
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Delacroix' famous "LIberty Leading the People" - but it's based on the successful 1830 revolution, not the disastrous 1832 uprising.