Queen Christine

Synopsis

The young Queen Christine of Sweden is promised in marriage to her cousin but she is in love with a Spanish emissary . Last of his lineage, she decides to abdicate to marry the one she loves.

Technical sheet

• Title: Queen Christine
• Original title: Queen Christina
• Director: Rouben Mamoulian
• Scenario: Sam Behrman , Salka Viertel and Ben Hecht (uncredited) after a story by Salka Viertel and Margaret P. Levino
• Dialogues: HM Harwood
• Music: Herbert Stothart
• Photography: William H. Daniels
• Editing: Blanche Sewell
• Artistic direction: Edwin B. Willis , Alexander Toluboff  (en)
• Set Design: Edgar G. Ulmer (uncredited)
• Costumes: Adrian
• Production: Walter Wanger
• Production company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Country of origin: United States
• Language: English
• Genre: Biography , History , Romance
• Format: Black and White – Sound: Mono (Western Electric Sound System)
• Duration: 99 minutes
• Release dates:
  • United States : December 26 , 1933(first in New York ), February 9 , 1934 (national release)
  • United Kingdom : February 16 , 1934
  • France : April 13 , 1934

Distribution

• Greta Garbo (VF: Claude Marcy ) : Queen Christine
• John Gilbert : Antonio
• Ian Keith : Magnus
• Lewis Stone : Oxenstierna
• C. Aubrey Smith : Aage
• Reginald Owen : Charles
• Georges Renavent : Ambassador of France
• David Torrence : The Archbishop
• Gustav von Seyffertitz : the general
• Elizabeth Young: Countess Ebba Spare

Uncredited Actors:

• Carrie Daumery : a lady of the court
• Edward Norris : Count Jacob

Reviews and comments

• This film is the antithesis of Sternberg’s historical conception in The Red Empress . As much as the latter creates an imaginary space by a decorative overload, Mamoulian tries to give credibility to his reconstruction. Both films escape their way to the Hollywood standard. The decor of Mamoulian’s film is impressive, but almost emptied by an acute staging that underlines its cold geometry. The very sharp light gives a very hard modeling faces, accentuating the “Jansenist” side of the film. That of Garbo, so carnal in his first films, becomes an androgynous mask, beautiful and terrible, whose ambiguity is exploited in the scene where, disguised as a young man, she seduces John Gilbert. Even when he discovers his identity,.

A role that echoes the life of Greta Garbo

• Greta Garbo was very early interested in the life of Queen Christine, Swedish like her, and an exceptional freedom of manners. She tells her friend Salka Viertel , who writes for her the screenplay of Anna Christie , from 1930.
• The androgynous aspect of the character is in phase with that of the actress.
• At the end of the film, Christine abdicates and renounces the throne of Sweden, just like Garbo, after 1941, will give up the cinema.
• “All my life, I’ve been a symbol. I’m tired of being a symbol. I want to become a human being Garbo’s sentence in Queen Christine. The parallel with the life of the actress is striking.

Variety song

In his song Madame Garbo (1967) Mouloudji evokes this film and the person of Greta Garbo, whom he says he fell in love at seven and a half while watching Queen Christina in a small cinema in the Ménilmontant district in Paris.

References