Marie Antoinette (1938) Review: The Good, The Bad & How to Watch American Film, Drama, History Venice Film Festival, 1938- Winner: Best Actress Academy Awards, 1939- 4 nominations including: Best Actress in a Leading Role When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer poured an astronomical budget into bringing the doomed French queen to the silver screen in nineteen thirty-eight, Hollywood was not merely making a movie; it was constructing an entire vanished world. Directed primarily by W. S. Van Dyke, Marie Antoinette stands today as one of the ultimate monuments to the golden age of American cinema, a sprawling historical epic that blends lavish romance with the looming terror of the French Revolution. More on Wikipedia or Mubi Cinematic Splendor and Tragedy in Hollywood's 1938 Marie Antoinette At the heart of the production is Norma Shearer, reigning royalty of the studio lot and widow of legendary producer Irving Thalberg, who had passionately championed the pr...
The film premiered in competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2022, where it won the Jury Prize, tying with The Eight Mountains. Submitted by Poland, EO was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.
🎼 Soundtrack & music
The original soundtrack, composed by Pawel Mykietyn, was released September 30, 2022, via Milan Records
It includes 19 tracks, spanning about 48–49 minutes, featuring evocative titles like "The Beginning", "After the Circus", "Wolves, Lasers", "Tunnel", "White Horse", "Love Story", and "Tribute to Donkey"
Notable performances include Mykietyn’s own compositions and works like the 2nd Cello Concerto by Mykietyn played by Marcel Markowski, and "Diabolique" by Tomasz Orángek
The soundtrack is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and other digital platforms .
Additional album details (label, catalogue number, audio formats) are available via Milan and Presto Classical.
Why the music stands out
The score plays a central role in giving voice to EO’s perspective—underscoring the donkey’s emotional and psychological journey.
Tracks like “Tunnel” and “Tribute to Donkey” elegantly frame key moments of isolation, wonder, suffering, and resilience.
Mykietyn’s orchestration alternates between sparse, haunting melodies and more intense, rhythmic pieces (“Wolves, Lasers”) to reflect EO's shifting experiences.
🎬 Film significance
EO continues Skolimowski’s experimental storytelling, this time adopting an animal protagonist to bypass conventional dialogue and narrative forms.
The film uses EO’s journey—shot with alternating objective and donkey-point-of-view techniques—to comment on humanity’s contradictions: kindness vs. cruelty, innocence vs. exploitation.
Besides being a cinematic meditation, EO sparked conversations about animal empathy, and reportedly even influenced vegetarian choices among the cast and crew.
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