netwallah Review of Queen Christina

Queen Christina (1933)

A great queen reduced to Ruritanian romance--but Garbo is still spectacular

[6/10 · 15 June 2006]

I don't know enough about the historical Queen Christina, but I suspect several key elements of this movie are products not of the 17th century but of 1930s sensibilities. The real queen was strong, bright, determined, and intellectual—she invited Descartes to Sweden to teach her. At some point she converted to Roman Catholicism and abdicated the throne, probably in order to live in a climate more hospitable to her interests in learning, science, and the arts, and perhaps more hospitable to her religion. In the movie, Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) is an austere and unconventional monarch, dressed in man's clothing and riding and hunting with her trusty servant Aage (C. Aubrey Smith), and she determines to end the years of war and bloodshed. She's reluctant to marry her cousin the hero-prince Charles, and when she meets and falls in love with the Spanish ambassador (John Gilbert), she has a reason not to marry Charles. The film relegates her studies to early morning reading, and her abandonment of the crown to love of a foreigner—one who dies inconveniently just before they set off together for Spain. This Christina is a great deal simpler than the historical Christina—her main objection to staying on as a queen is that it would prevent her from being happy with the man she loves. This Christina is far more driven by emotions, far quicker to leave her talents for ruling behind, far more ready to leave her people in the hands of less qualified rulers, far more heterosexual. But in exchange we get Garbo, far more convincing as a woman in love than as a steely-minded royal strategist. There are some scenes in which she is really astonishingly lovely, and that should be enough to counteract the sense that this movie isn't really about the queen of Sweden—it's another Ruritanian romance with a Swedish flavour.