20 years after its release, it’s difficult to overstate the influence of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. While it wasn’t the first period drama to take an anachronistic approach (Moulin Rouge and A Knight’s Tale, both released in 2001, featured modern rock and pop music in their soundtracks), the film reinvented and revived what was hitherto a staid, stuffy genre. There would be no Bridgerton, no The Favourite and, for better or worse, no “Wuthering Heights” without it. It also gave rise to one of the most successful PR reversals in history: Marie Antoinette went from being a historical villain, almost universally associated with decadence and callous indifference to suffering, to a figure who still crops up in teenage Tumblr accounts and Pinterest moodboards as a kind of feminine martyr and enduring symbol of girlhood.

Because anachronism is so integral to the film itself – the 1980s new wave soundtrack (to my mind, one of the best of all time), the flash of Converse trainers in a lavish montage – the hundreds of behind-the-scenes photographs collected in Making Marie Antoinette, a new book by Andrew Durham (published by Coppola’s imprint, Important Flowers, and MACK), don’t seem as incongruous as you might expect. It somehow makes sense to see Kirsten Dunst, done up in a baroque wig and resplendent gowns, smoking a cigarette or riding a motorcycle, along with the other actors captured in between takes – as the press release puts it, “somewhere between reality and the entrancing fiction of the film”.

What the book really emphasises is just how meticulous and well-crafted Coppola’s vision was (Marie Antoinette deservedly won an Academy Award for costume design). Even punctured by the presence of film equipment and other artefacts of modern life, the overall effect is one of sheer splendour. 

Alongside these photographs, Making Marie Antoinette also features an oral history of the film’s making by Keaton Well, and an in-depth conversation between Durham and Coppola, who are long-time friends and collaborators. Altogether, it’s a fascinating insight into a film which, having met with mixed reviews at the time, deserves its status as an enduring, beloved cult classic. 

Making Marie Antoinette (Important Flowers, 2026) by Andrew Durham is published by MACK.