Like so many historical Hollywood epics made during its Golden Age, the historical accuracy found in Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina is not to be trusted, but that doesn’t make this lush romantic drama any less entertaining or absorbing.
The Production: 4/5
Like so many historical Hollywood epics made during its Golden Age, the historical accuracy found in Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina is not to be trusted, but that doesn’t make this lush romantic drama any less entertaining or absorbing. The infamous “bachelor queen” of 17th century Sweden is entrusted to one of Hollywood’s queens, Greta Garbo, and her nuanced, deeply felt performance carries the flimsy story right along to a satisfactory if less than divinely happy conclusion.
After suffering through three decades of war after ascending to the Swedish throne, Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) finally calls an end to fighting bringing much welcome peace to her realm. But the queen’s life is anything but peaceful. She’s expected to marry the nation’s greatest war hero and her cousin Prince Charles (Reginald Owen), a man old enough to be her father, and she’s being pursued by Count Magnus (Ian Keith), another of Sweden’s nobles. But her heart takes her in a different direction, much more interested in her lady-in-waiting Ebba (Elizabeth Young) though Ebba herself has found true love in a soldier’s arms, and the queen, disappointed in this turn of events, flees in disguise from the palace for some private time in a neighboring inn. Along the way she runs across Spanish ambassador Antonio (John Gilbert) who has brought a marriage proposal from Spain’s King Philip IV, but due to a blizzard, the two find themselves trapped in the inn, sharing the same room and allowing nature to take its course, leading Christina to have to make some tough decisions about the future of her reign.
The script by H.M. Harwood, Salka Viertel, and S.N. Behrman invents characters for the real-life Swedish monarch to come into contact with thus making the queen’s abdication a question of religious incompatibility (the Swedes’ Protestantism versus the Spanish Catholicism) rather than problems arising over her own struggles with sexual orientation. Rouben Mamoulian, always among Hollywood’s most stylish and creative directors, stages sequences which are like those of no other director: the “meet cute” when Christina assists Antonio whose carriage has bogged down in a snow drift, the lengthy sequence after Christina and Antonio’s first night together where she traverses the room slowly fingering everything in it so better to retrieve moments from her memory in the years to come, her brazen face-off with her riotous subjects on the grand staircase as she assures them her years of leadership experience compares favorably to their years of working class expertise, and the climactic final shot, among the most famous in cinema history, where the queen gazes blankly ahead contemplating what’s next for her. True, Mamoulian’s staging of the abdication scene goes on a bit long (though he wrings maximum emotion from many of the actors whose characters are devastated by her decision), but the reverse tracking shot with which he concludes it is master class filmmaking. Because this was a pre-Code film, intimations of homosexuality not only between Ebba and Christina but also Antonio’s assistant Pedro’s (an unbilled, youthful Akim Tamiroff) being allowed to think his master has spent the night and day in the same bed with another man are allowed to remain unchecked. In the grand MGM manner of the period (1933, the height of the Depression), of course, the sets and costumes are magnificent but very expensive: this was the first of Garbo’s films that was so costly that its budget wasn’t earned back by its domestic gross; it took grosses from the rest of the world to put the film in the black.
She didn’t earn an Oscar nomination for the movie, but this is one of Greta Garbo’s most intense and effective performances. She was eager to play her native land’s “bachelor queen,” and her enthusiasm is evident in all of the scenes, not just the love scenes with old paramour and one-time fiancé John Gilbert (making a return to MGM at her insistence instead of Laurence Olivier who had been cast but fired at Garbo’s urging) but in both high comedy and intense drama as she struggles throughout for the desperate queen to find some happiness. Gilbert’s voice resonates in all of his scenes, recorded in a way that reduces any nasal intonations from his earlier sound efforts though one notices his hands are unusually busy in many of his moments. Equally earnest and effective is Ian Keith as the film’s singular antagonist, an entitled noble too certain of his own charm and desirability. Lewis Stone offers an outstanding performance as the queen’s prime minister Oxenstierna, and C. Aubrey Smith matches his professionalism with a solid portrayal as another court stalwart Aage. Elizabeth Young is fine as the lovely Ebba.
Video: 4/5
3D Rating: NA
The film has been framed at its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37:1 and is presented in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Though the image is very clean and the grayscale is solid if not boasting the deepest black levels imaginable, it’s clear that sharpness is not optimal here, certainly the sign that the transfer is generations removed from the original camera negative. Still, William Daniels’ cinematography is quite wonderful capturing Garbo at her most beautiful. The movie has been divided into 35 chapters.
Audio: 4.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix betrays its age a tiny bit in some of the quieter moments of the movie. Hiss has been greatly curtailed throughout, but the audio does display signs of attenuated hiss in places though it’s never the least bit distracting.
Special Features: 2/5
Theatrical Trailer (2:18, HD)
MGM Parade #31 (29:22, HD): Walter Pidgeon hosts the second part of a salute to Greta Garbo, this time covering the second half of her career beginning with Anna Karenina and covering Camille, Conquest, and Ninotchka. George Cukor stops by to give his thoughts about what it was like to direct Garbo in Camille. Pidgeon also presents clips from the upcoming release Gaby starring Leslie Caron and John Kerr.
Overall: 4/5
Forget the history and simply revel in the magnificent production values and exquisite acting of Greta Garbo and company in Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina. The Warner Archive Blu-ray release comes highly recommended.
Queen Christina [Blu-Ray]
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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