Movies - Queen Christina

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Queen Christina is a 1933 Pre-Code Hollywood feature film, starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The film was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and the screenwriters were Viertel LeVino and Margaret "Peg" LeVino, with dialogue credit given to S. N. Behrman. It was adapted from Faith Compton's Sybil of the North. This highly fictionalized feature film was based on the life of the 17th century Queen Christina of Sweden. It was billed as Garbo's return to cinema after an eighteen-month hiatus.

One could imagine why Garbo would be intrigued by this project. She was given the opportunity to play a queen from her homeland of Sweden. And as such, Garbo was in total control of Queen Christina. She chose the director, cameraman, and cast. One of the screenwriters, Salka Viertel, was a personal friend. She had initially requested that Sir Laurence Olivier play the part of Christina's lover, since she was impressed with him in a previous film. But during rehearsals in August 1933, Garbo and Olivier did not have any chemistry. Instead, Garbo requested that Gilbert (who was once her fiancé) get the part.

In the feature film, Garbo's Christina is made to abdicate her throne for the love of a Spanish ambassador, Don Antonio, played by Gilbert. There is also no mention of the real Christina's conversion to Catholicism. The conclusion of Queen Christina contains one of the most famous shots in the history of feature film. In a long, silent tracking shot which moves into a close-up, Garbo is standing on the brow of a ship, gazing out at the horizon. It has been interpreted in many different ways, mostly due to Garbo's own ambiguity as an actress. According to the director, he told Garbo to think of absolutely nothing, to have her face be a mask, and never to blink in order to create this final shot.

Fairly or unfairly, this film was snubbed at Oscar time, and it did not do that well at the box office either despite good reviews from critics. Many consider Garbo's performance in Queen Christina to be among her best.

Trivia

Although marketed as an historical drama, in fact Queen Christina, at least during the first half, proceeds almost like a romantic comedy, especially once Gilbert's character is introduced. Garbo is seen laughing and playing comedic scenes as Gilbert initially mistakes her for a man -- although her later film, Ninotchka
was marketed as and is generally considered to be her first real comedy, and also the first time she laughed on film.
This was John Gilbert's last major film. A major star of silent films in the 1920s, Gilbert's career was all but destroyed due to altercations with Louis B. Mayer coupled with public dissatisfaction with his speaking voice with the advent of talking pictures. As noted above, his former fiancée Garbo lobbied for Gilbert to co-star with her, and he received a new seven-year contract with MGM as a result, but the film failed to revive his career and he died three years later.
References to the Queen's bisexuality are made explicit by her kissing her lady-in-waiting on the lips.

Sources

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Queen Christina (film) ]

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