Ludzie pragną czasami się rozstawać, żeby móc tęsknić, czekać i cieszyć się z powrotem.
1 ff. For a study on film stars as fashion icons, and dress in relation to stardom
see for instance: Therése Andersson, Beauty Box: Filmstjärnor och skönhetskultur i det tidiga
1900-talets Sverige. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet / Almqvist & Wiksell International,
2006 / 2008
3
The work of couturières, which occasionally design for cinema, is therefore not considered
here; nor are extra cinematic, non-narrative purposes of costumes. Film costumes can of
course exist independently of, and outside a narrative. Garments from famous films have a
life outside the moving image as they are perceived as icons, venerated and exhibited in mu-
seums, or auctioned at sky-high prices. Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Iden-
tity in the Movies. London & New York: Routledge, 1997/2004, p. xiii, and Patrizia Calefato,
The Clothed Body. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2004, p. 96
4
For a study on Marie Antoinette as a historical figure and fashion icon see for instance: Caro-
line Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. New York: H.
Holt, 2006
5
For a discussion on dress and stardom pointing to subliminal readings of and counter-
narratives in clothing, see for instance Drake Stutesman's article on Marlene Dietrich as star
in Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930) and Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932). Drake
Stutesman, ‘Storytelling: Marlene Dietrich's Face and John Frederic's Hats’, in Fashioning
Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity, ed. Rachel Moseley, London: BFI, 2005, pp. 27-38
6
The story of transformation film refers to the successful change of appearance of the main
female character, from an unappealing ‘before’ to an attractive ‘after’; Now, Voyager (Rap-
per, 1942) and She's All That (Fleming, 1999). For a discussion on transformation film, see
for instance Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and Trans-
formation in American Film. London & New York: 2010
7
See also: Christine Gledhill, ‘The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation’, in Home is Where
the Heart is, ed. Christine Gledhill, London: BFI, 1987, pp. 1–39. Melodrama films include,
for instance; Gone With the Wind (Flemming, 1939), All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1956),
Dr. Zhivago (Lean, 1965), The Way We Were (Pollack, 1973), The Color Purple (Spielberg,
1984), Philadelphia (Demme, 1993), Far From Heaven (Haynes, 2002).
110
Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011
8
See for instance: Production notes: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/marieantoinette/site/
2006 (23 Nov, 2007)
9
As Julianne Pidduck points out: ‘...cinema can never offer an unmediated window onto the
past, and historical fiction and costume drama alike depict the past through the stylistic, criti-
cal and generic vocabularies of present cultural production.’ Pidduck, 2004, p. 4. For a dis-
cussion on Marie Antoinette's kinship with the Dogma 95 Manifesto, and diversity to conven-
tional cinematographic rules of historical film see for instance Elise Wortel, Textures of Time:
A Study of Cinematic Sensations of Anachronism. Nijmegen: Radbound University, 2008
10 The costumes for Marie Antoinette played, as mentioned above, a central part in the whole
design of the film; each character of the court has his or her own unique look. For instance,
Comtesse de Noialles (Judy Davis) is elegant and her style stands out, she wears a lot of yel-
low, citrus and lime in order to represent her ‘acidic qualities’, as Canonero puts it. Madame
de Barry (Asia Argento) is the opposite, and more ‘like an exotic bird, almost like a parrot’,
wearing turbans, feathers and a lot of jewellery. The parrot-epithet reoccurs from time to
time, and in one of the early scenes the court ladies call her an ‘exotic bird’ behind her back,
referring to her gaudy way of dressing in deep red, purple and lilac, as well as the feather ac-
cessories. In a couple of scenes, Madame de Barry actually walks around with a parrot on her
shoulder, making the connection unavoidable.
11 As such, the palette was inspired by Laduree macaroons, and Coppola called the colour
scheme of the movie ‘a “cake and cookie” kind of thing’. Production notes, 2006 (23 Nov,
2007)
References
Andersson, Therése (2006/2008): Beauty Box: Filmstjärnor och skönhetskultur i det tidiga 1900-
talets Sverige. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet / Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Bruzzi, Stella (1997/2004): Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies, London &
New York: Routledge.