12 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK RECAP: Maria Theresia (2017) Episode 3

  1. Whoa, this is such an improvement from the first two episodes I can almost feel myself giving everything else a pass… I mean, they even stopped putting wigs on all the ladies. Huge change. I wonder if maybe the designer just had a very short design time for the first part and was renting a lot?

    Also, love the re-casting. Not for anything but after the first two write-ups I googled Maria Theresa and she gave birth to like 16 children (most of whom survived to adulthood, yay, and including Marie Antoinette, which I hadn’t put together)… I mean, of course there just wouldn’t be a lot of time to lose weight between that many pregnancies.

  2. Why does Goth Mom not age? Is she secretly Goth Vampire Mom?
    History still is in failure mode, but casting an actress that looks like she has had 16 children (actual count) and is beautiful is a plus and the costumes go from an F to possibly a C- and still not period appropriate. But they look preety-ish.

    Could some costumes belong to the Vienna State Opera?

  3. The bed sharing might in fact be correct – I remember reading in Antonia Fraser’s bio of Marie Antoinette that Maria Theresa and Francis did indeed share a bed and that was one of the many “helpful suggestions” that MT kept giving MA and Louis XVI to fix the no consummation problem.

  4. So the dresses are getting better. Losing the awful cotton ball wigs helps a lot doesn’t it? But so much skirt hiking! As I understand it one of the advantages of hoops is that they hold the skirts away from your feet so you don’t have to lift them but sort of steer them by resting your hands easily on the swell.

  5. As a larger woman myself, it’s always good to see more non-skinny women in media, especially when they were appropriate in history. The dresses do look better, and I wonder how Marie Antoinette’s marriage will be handled.

  6. I didn’t saw it yet. It’s typical that the designers or directors find the 1740s fashion too boring. Therefor they have to give the main characters at least high coiffures (as they done in “Tom Jones” 1997, “Thieves in the Wood” (in combination with beards!) 2019 …). The whole story seems to be in the same stupid style. I hate the fact, that in every German or Austrian production the French are depicted in a comic style.

  7. I don’t think that 1740s fashion is boring.Instead,I am less fond of the 1780s fashion when everything went too pastel and too calico,and too much hair(hedgehogs!).I just love the opulent smartness of 1740s fashions-neither too showy nor too subdued,and neither drowning in a sea of jewels nor getting washed out in a sea of pastels.I so wish somebody got the era right.Unfortunately very few productions are set in this era and the ones that are set are clunkers like MT.

    1. Oh dear, exactly. There are so many portraits from roughly that era scattered in Czech chateaus, often more streamlined because they are just your everyday nobility, smooth bodices, jewel tones and simpler hair, and I love those styles, and they’re totally non-existant in popular culture and popular perceptions of the 18th century. Bah!

  8. For a minute, I was afraid that Goth Mom had lost her goth…
    But luckily she seems to have gotten in back. I agree that this is a huge improvement over the first two, though.

  9. I think they may have had a bigger budget this time around, and I do remember from the exhibition I saw last year that they got their brocades from an Italian workshop that specialises in them. I also seem to remember that the costume designer is still pretty young so he may have just expanded his historical knowledge considerably since last time, in fact. :D
    The ridiculous storylines / soap-opera style of the previous installment were enough for me to not want to see the rest, though. But some of the new dresses really impressed me a lot, especially in the context of otherwise being used to n-times rented old Barrandov costumes… although others are still pretty bad in the “more to tell a story to a modern audience than any respect for what was actually done historically”. (I came upon the exhibition by chance while visiting a chateau.)
    Also there was a really cute photo of the two main actors getting selfies in costume. :D

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