The Favourites of Queen Anne (and Queen Christina)

Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz, (footmen) and director Yorgos Lanthimos

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has won multiple prizes at A – list film festivals with dark comedies on language and gender. His latest film The Favourite is perhaps his most conventional film using the form of the historical drama. It premiered at the recent Venice Film Festival taking home the Grand Jury Prize, and a Volpi Cup awarded to Elizabeth Colman. The film is based on a radio play "Balance of Power" by Deborah Davis produced by the BBC in 2008 (script written in 1998) and the film producers sought out Lantimos to put it on screen. He revealed at Venice that he had to wait until Emma Stone was done with La La Land to make it. The Greek director found Davis’ play “too political” and hired Tony McNamara to give it a Lanthimos twist with focus on the female trio of lovers. Davis concern was to illustrate how these intimate relationships with the Queen affected political power during her reign.

A ‘favourite’ was a favored person to the regent common in the 16th through 18th centuries of early modern Europe. The relationship included various levels of intimacy including same sex love or otherwise. As Shakespeare wrote about them in Much Ado about Nothing - "Like favourites/ Made proud by Princes". Examples of “favourites” include Ebba Sparre, lady in waiting to the 17th century regent Queen Christina of Sweden, and Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) and Lady Sarah Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) who vie for the coveted role to Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).

Lanthimos’ film presents Queen Anne as an incapable political ruler and a failure in personal relationships. In real life she had 17 children who died at childbirth or early infancy. The characters in Lantimos’ films are often cruel and sadistic and those in “The Favourite” are no exception, extending to members of the cabinet, ministers, and “the lady of the bedchamber”. The storytelling is not only presented through characters and dialogue but the mise en scène - the spaces in which the narrative is told and illustrated through lighting, costume, makeup, movement and setting. The compositions in this film indeed are equal characters. Filmed with a wide-angle lens, the rooms are often concave – massive kitchens with high stone ceilings and thick walls, the low ceiling palace with herringbone creaky wood floors, and the sumptuous overstuffed royal bedchamber with rabbits, each representing one of the 17 children she lost.

The Favourite is a tale of royal corruption and negligence especially between the rival favorites and Queen Anne, footmen, maids, servants, and in-residence earls. While courtesans engage in training ducks for races, Anne played brilliantly by distinguished British actress Olivia Colman has for years been attended to by her “favourite” - Lady Marlborough who advises her politically and personally. Her husband, the Duke of Marlborough is a military commander, and both engage in coordinating their asks to the regent for mutual benefit. In one scene, Sarah stridently mounts the bed of Anne with her boots and commands her to take better charge of the country and the military. Anne reluctantly crumbles to her wishes. The opening scene shows the arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abigail in a crowded coach including a self-pleasuring nobleman who shoves her onto a field of grass with human excrement. After this embarrassing introduction, Abigail installs herself in the kitchen, an opportunistic “fallen” lady who wants to rise again after being exchanged by her father to an elderly man to settle a gambling debt. Anne’s loyal and capable Sarah manages court affairs and truly loves her but is incrementally passed over by her younger cousin, clueless to all things regal as well as intricacies of military maneuvers, which she compares to “party games”. When Abigail sees Anne and Sarah in bed, her plan takes action – not because she loves Anne but because she knows bedding her is an opportunity to get a leg up in the palace. It doesn’t matter how she gains favor, for Abigail manages to poison Sarah’s tea before a ride where she is dragged by her horse for miles and taken in by a madam at a brothel to recuperate. During this time, Abigail endears herself to Anne who marries her to a resident statesman and gifts her dowry, an expense she writes off as a gambling debt. Abigail is once again a commodity exchange.

The historical revisionism of the film while captivating is ultimately a tale of women conniving and scheming for power from a regent who is ridiculed by the men of the court. If Davis’ aim was to show how this erotic liaison created power shifts in government, Lanthimos settles for trivializing and ridiculing the Queen. These scenes are the centerfold of the film and fit with the historic creation of ‘pleasure’ in film and other representational forms characterized by torture or ridicule of women.

The Swedish regent Queen Christina wrote in her autobiography that that she was mistaken for a boy at birth. As regent, she often dressed in male attire and refused to marry. Her gender fluidity and abdication of the throne to live in Rome have been the subjects of historical speculation,.Representations of Queen Christina of Sweden can be found in historic erotic lampoons (“nidskrifter”) where her relationships with women and her use of male clothing were ridiculed. Her relationships with women were a source of gossip and an exhumation of her body from her tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was made to test for proof of her sexuality in the 1960’s (1).

Rouben Mamoulian's film Queen Christina (US 1933) shows her "favourite" Ebba Sparre but also her love interest in the Spanish envoy Antonio (John Gilbert) who initially mistakes her for a man due to her "male attire".

Sarah Gadon and Malin Buska

Mika Kaurismäki's The Girl King (2015 Finland) shows the relationship between Kristina (Malin Buska) and Sparre (Sarah Gadon) as a love affair that ends in Sparre's betrayal. In neither film is Christina ridiculed as she was in real life because of her attire or "favourites". It is Lantimos' film that ridicules the historic Anne due to her poor education, ineffective statesmanship and love of her "favourites".  Queen Anne is portrayed in the film as a buffoon of limited intelligence. Her physical ailments are given considerable attention and add to a portrait of weakness and incompetence for the monarch who died at 49.

Nevertheless, what the acting ensemble of Stone, Weisz and Colman brings to the screen is not altogether disempowering. Abigail and Sara vie for the attention of their queen through bold and emblazoned efforts. They must be dastardly to each other to bluntly and crudely win her affection. The queen realizes this and enjoys the power play. The link to how it affects her in parliament, however, is not clear. Lanthimos did not care about the history – the ‘politics’ as Davis did in her radio play, at present unavailable on the BBC. At the press conference in Venice, the Greek director revealed that he did not want to focus on same sex love for female regents and their ‘favourites’. There was no gay rights or LGBT movement at the time, but when we look back upon this historical period it is important to affirm same sex relationships, which some directors, producers and distributors avoid in order to prevent the film from being typecast as gay.

Lanthimos is not alone. Xavier Dolan, winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes in 2012 refused to accept the award for his film about an MTF transgender and “typecast” his film. “The Favourite” was also nominated for a Queer Lion this year. Deborah Davis realized that to depict ‘favourites’ would make the story ‘gay’ and complicate the ‘pitch’ to producers for financing. Lanthimos’ films are widely distributed and “The Favourite” has won and is nominated for several awards. The special media and public interest in the film is in fact due to a story of lesbians at court and the three top actresses who play them. Lanthimos has succeeded in creating a film where the reality of a regent and her darlings even though unnamed is out there.

Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz

1) In 1965, the body of Queen Kristina of Sweden was exhumed from her tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to test for proof of her sexuality, possible intersex, a hypothesis put forth in 1937 by Swedish doctor Elis Essen-Möller in Drottning Christina - en människostudie ur läkaresynpunkt (Queen Christina - a human study from a doctor's point of view). This idea popularized by Swedish author Sven Stolpe and historian Curt Weibell led to the exhumation of her body in 1965. Carl-Herman Hjortsjö led the exhumation filmed by a Swedish TV team. (Drottning Christina: gravöppningen i Rom 1965 : en kulturhistorisk och medicinsk-antropologisk undersökning. (Queen Christian Exhumation in Rome: a cultural-historic and medical-anthropological study).

Diverse winners at the Golden Globes

For once HFPA Golden Globes were winners that defy the predictable awards that are chosen over and over - and on to the Oscars for more of the same. Best dramatic actor Rami Malik was brilliant as Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody", winner of best dramatic film and dedicated his best actor award to him! Lady Gaga won best song for "Shallow" as she should but no other awards went to the remake of "A Star is Born," leaving Judy Garland and James Mason as the best sublime tragic couple in of this film .

Glen Close gave an outstanding speech as best dramatic actress for "The Wife"--it took 10 years to make it, she said, because of the title. Her character follows her husband (Jonathan Pryce ) to the Noble Prize ceremony for his award. In real life her 80 year mother confided she hadn't accomplished anything in her life, and Close proclaimed that like many wives, a lifetime of subordination is a waste and that women must find their own voice. Best speech of evening. Carol Burnett explained how being young in the TV business of today is truly eclipsed by how fantastic it was to work in the 50's and 60's and the Carol Burnett Television Award was inaugurated.

Richard Madden won best TV actor in a drama -- thanking his great co-star Keeley Hawes -- Kitty in "Touching the Velvet" (2002), opposite Rachel Sterling as Nan. Sandra Oh won best actress for the TV drama, "Killing Eve" but as emcee of the Globes, both she and Jeremy Park bombed (did they write that stuff?).

Jeff Bridges as recipient of the Cecil B DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award gave a hard to follow speech about being touched by luck and urging everyone to touch each other. "Green Book" declared rightly so as best "comedy" of 2018 , best screenplay and acting awards to Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. "The Favourite's" British star Olivia Coleman gave a warm and witty thank you as best actress in a comedy.
Best actress and supporting actress in a limited series went to two powerful women - Patricia Arquette - "Escape At Dannemora"and Patricia Clarkson for "Sharp Objects" . Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk's Regina King won best supporting actress in a drama proclaiming that 50% of future projects that she will produce will be women. As the first woman of color HFPA emcee, Sandra Oh acknowledged her sisters in the industry.

Diversity

Maria by Callas - in her own words.

Excellent documentary by Tom Volf on Maria Callas, in her own words with rare footage of her operas and appearances throughout the world. How she felt about her life as a woman. Aptly named "Maria By Callas". Opening in US November 9.

We see her surrounded through most of the film by men, fans, hounding journalists who don’t take no for an answer until she says firmly, no interviews, now stop it. But it is also evident how many women are standing in the background who are devoted fans. Always elegant with a speaking voice that is cultured , mid- atlantic- partly British partly American pronunciation. Throughout the film, Maria's thoughts about her career are candid but there is the other part where she is shown speaking under duress, under the lights of photographers standing over her, talking at her , questioning her. When she arrives at the Cannes film festival in 1960, she is a lone woman in a sea of men.

This documentary does not go into the gossip about Onassis and Jackie Kennedy or the provincialism directed against the younger Callas for being moderately overweight in a profession where hefty male opera singers are never derided. But her letter about the marriage of her friend Onassis to Jackie Kennedy reveals that she found out about their marriage in the newspaper. There is documentary footage of Onassis and Callas on his yacht , a trip that began their friendship and resulted in Maria divorcing her much older husband of 10 years, the industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini who helped her with her career in Italy. Onassis, said Callas, was instrumental in getting her to relax and enjoy her art. The time they spent at Cannes and Monte Carlo involved gatherings with celebrities such as Grace Kelley and Jean Cocteau. Callas did make a film with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Medea , an art house film written by Pasolini where she has the title role of a sorceress who kills her husband and children. She is brilliant in it. We know she was a great actress from her recreations of classic opera.

No matter how she has been the recipient of ridiculous theories about her register, her temperament, and love affairs from tabloid journalism , she was a phenomenal artist. This documentary proves it.

"By virtue of sheer determination, she triumphed over her vocal limitations. She immersed herself in her roles, studying every word and every phrase for maximum musical and dramatic effect. Her singing was full of subtle inflections, accentuations, shadings, that were foreign territory to most other sopranos. She extended this kind of superior musicianship to her approach to the stage. Every gesture meant something, every movement and facial expression was aimed toward an emotional or dramatic climax" (NYTimes 1977).

A biopic is still in production (or was), directed by Niki Caro ( The Whale Rider 2002) with Noomi Rapace playing Maria Callas. Hard to believe Rapace in this role.

Men like Weinstein are afraid of women

Women should not be afraid of men like Weinstein. The stories that are about fear are changing into righteous rage. Women must stand up for themselves , stand united, and express 0 tolerance for this behavior. Men are actually afraid of women, which is what is really behind this kind of abuse. Men are afraid of women's intelligence, fortitude, strength, and beauty. Men have made women into monsters in mythology like Medusa with fangs and witches with long noses, and in cinema, Baby Jane, Carrie, Regan (Linda Blair), Ripley. Men in Hollywood abuse young children like Shirley Temple and countless young women as Weinstein has because they are afraid. Abuse is not about power, but fear.

SundayReview | OP-ED COLUMNIST

Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood’s Oldest Horror Story

Maureen Dowd OCT. 14, 2017

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CreditMelody Newcomb

In her autobiography, “Child Star,” Shirley Temple described going with her mother to see her new bosses at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after leaving Fox.

Louis B. Mayer spirited away Gertrude Temple. The curly-haired superstar — hailed by F.D.R. for helping America get through the Depression — was taken to the office of Arthur Freed, an associate producer on “The Wizard of Oz.”

After telling her that she would have to get rid of her baby fat, Freed abruptly stood up and pulled out his penis. The 11-year-old had never even seen one before. She gave a nervous laugh, which offended the producer.

“Get out!” he shouted.

When she rejoined her mother, an affronted Gertrude told Shirley that she had had to back out of Mayer’s office when he lunged at her.

“Not for nothing was the M.G.M. lot known as the ‘factory,’ a studio perfumed with sultry, busty creatures with long legs and tight haunches,” Temple wrote, “and more than its quota of lecherous older men.”

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Nearly 80 years later, that aroma of perversion and maladroit du seigneur clings to Hollywood. Now we are inundated with grotesque tales of Harvey Weinstein pulling out his penis to show to appalled and frightened young women, enlisting the pimping help of agents and assistants to have actresses delivered to his hotel rooms, where he pestered the women to watch him shower or give him a massage or engage in intimate acts.

“The ill will towards him for getting away with it all for so long has unleashed something so primitive,” a prominent male Hollywood producer told me. “If people could rip him apart, they would. Literally everyone in Hollywood is taking marshmallows to roast at his burning corpse.”

Dana Calvo, the creator of “Good Girls Revolt,” noted: “We have been saying, just get us in the room. But we meant the pitch room or the editing room or the boardroom. Not Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room.

“I do know I will never look at bathrobes the same way. It’s the bathrobes versus the pussyhats.”

While not a victim of Weinstein’s, Calvo worked for Amazon Studios, which was headed by Roy Price until he was suspended on Thursday for sexual harassment allegations. He had already come under scrutiny for being culturally tone deaf, passing on two of the biggest hits of the year, “Big Little Lies” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” both of which swept the Emmys for their storytelling about women. And he canceled the popular “Good Girls Revolt” after one season, admitting he had never watched it.

Weinstein, 65, was the opposite, one of the rare men in Hollywood who didn’t care about pursuing an audience of 15-year-old boys with comic book movies. He was someone with taste who was trying to make movies with great roles for women of all ages, a top Democratic fund-raiser who was pushing to make Hillary Clinton the first woman president, a man trusted by the Obamas to have their daughter intern at his company.

But he had a diabolical side. He would tantalize actresses with dreams of stardom — in that dewy, fleeting window such hothouse orchids have to take Hollywood by storm. Often the actresses scrambled, trying to figure out how to get out of the room without having their futures shredded by the vindictive satyr, who also threatened to destroy actresses who balked at wearing dresses designed by his wife Georgina Chapman’s fashion label on the red carpet.

He relished the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands,” given to him by filmmakers who did not like his domination in the editing room. But the nickname could work just as well for his octopus ways with women, which resulted in lots of hush money being paid out.

And some of his own assistants say they were assailed. One ran out of the room, crying and distraught, after Weinstein pressed her into giving him a massage.

Some who were importuned or pawed, like Angelina Jolie, stalked away and told studio executives that she would never work with the pestilent mogul. Others whom Weinstein asked to give him a massage in his hotel suite refused but continued to collaborate, like Gwyneth Paltrow, who put aside qualms to become “the first lady of Miramax.”

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When David Carr wrote about “The Emperor Miramaximus” in 2001 for New York magazine — several years after the unpleasant experience Paltrow described for the first time this past week to The Times — he quoted her saying: “I think that for every bad story you hear about Harvey, there are three great ones. People are complicated, and nobody’s all good or all bad.”

Other victims, like Rose McGowan, took settlements from the mogul to stay quiet but continued to seethe, until her rage spilled over Thursday when she tweeted — after getting back on Twitter after an absurd banishment by the company — that Weinstein had raped her.

Once more we are in a searing national seminar on sexual misbehavior by men, just like the Hill-Thomas hearings, the Clinton impeachment hearings, the Bill Cosby trial, the downfalls of Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and other harassing big shots at Fox News, and Donald Trump and the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape.

How many times do we have to go through this before things really change?

“If you look at The Hollywood Reporter’s powerful women list,” said Janice Min, the former editor of that publication, “every single one of those women still reports to a man.” (By some estimates, there are only six women who have first-look overhead producing deals at the studios.)

Min recalled attending the $400,000 speech Barack Obama made as an ex-president to an A&E Networks advertising upfront at the Pierre hotel in New York in April.

“Afterwards, amid rapturous applause, he walks right over to Harvey Weinstein and gives Harvey a hug,” Min said. “You can see the optics of it all. It makes your head explode if you think of the inability to explode the male network.”

Min said that although The Hollywood Reporter tried to get the goods on “that looming, ominous, bellicose force” named Harvey for many years — “we had white boards full of names of women” — he was a master at protecting himself, just as Hugh Hefner was, by the veneer of power he cultivated, by giving to liberal causes and cultivating friends in the media and politics.

“There probably needs to be some introspection about how certain people who engage in horrendous mistreatment of women can co-opt the media,” she mused. “The fundamental predatory nature of Hollywood is young, attractive people — largely females — putting themselves in front of men to be judged and appraised and chosen.

“It is a dark equation. From the moment the proverbial girl gets off the bus, the odds are stacked against her. In Hollywood, unlike at other Fortune 500 companies, the one-on-one meetings take place in hotel suites and bars. It’s an exploitative and oddly personal process.”

Young actresses (and surely actors, too, with other powerful predators), Min said, knew that “Hollywood is built on nothing but the pursuit of Oscar and Emmy. Harvey had proven time and again he could get you the Oscar that could make your career. It’s the difference between being in the reboot of ‘Saved by the Bell’ or getting 15 million for your next role.”

Hollywood is a culture that runs on fear. And it is not like other professions, one top entertainment executive said, because “no one comes with a résumé. It’s about what you look like and who sent you.”

There was resentment against Weinstein in Hollywood, not only for the stories bubbling around about women, but the way he humiliated men who worked with him. He even berated a 15-year-old girl at a screening because her parents supported a political candidate he opposed.

Like Trump, that other self-professed predator, there were complaints that in business deals he stiffed people on bills (advertising and public relations payments), and he had a reputation for lying, cheating, taking advantage, acting like a thug. Many in the film community felt he besmirched the Oscars by turning it into a marketing race rather than a contest of quality.

I asked Tim Robbins, who had some unpleasant business dealings with Weinstein, what the moral of this foul, revolting story should be.

“It’s not just in show business, it’s every business,” he said. “It’s about men who use power to get an advantage over women. It’s gross, it’s unacceptable, but unfortunately, it’s pretty persistent.”

Women in Hollywood say social media, plus the anger about Trump getting into the Oval Office instead of Hillary, were propelling forces in the fire raining down on Weinstein.

“I hope it’s a witch hunt,” said a top Hollywood woman. “I hope it’s a purge. There are people we have to get rid of in our business. Everyone knows them.”

Bring charges against sexual predators: Allen, Polanski, Trump and Weinstein.

So many have been looking the other way for Roman Polanski (statutory rape) , Woody Allen (child molestation - his own) and Donald Trump (sexual harassment) - that it's about time that Harvey Weinstein is being nailed -- and so should the other above named predators. It's Allen's son that did the most scorching exposé of Weinstein's sex crimes. Trump doesn't deny it. Allen and Polanski hope it just goes away.

"I have moved so far past it. I never think about it. I work. I said I was never going to comment on it again. I said everything I have to say about it.” Woody Allen

"As far as what I did: It's over. I pleaded guilt. I went to jail. I came back to the United States to do it, people forget about that, or don't even know.” Polanski

"I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." Trump.