Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 1-January-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Queen Christina (1933)

As fantasies go, "Queen Christina" has something for everybody: castles, sleigh rides, swordplay, love, sacrifice, cross-dressing, and moral possibilities ranging from the dangers of nonconformity (if you're traditional) to the glory of pursuing your dreams (if you're romantic). Though it derives from the biography of a real 17th-century monarch, this Greta Garbo classic trades history for the greater glamor of fiction and its star, and indeed such a strong-willed woman in power is a good jumping-off point for the imagination. Christina is a queen of Sweden who inherited the throne when barely more than a toddler. Raised like a man per her late father's wishes, she's a philosopher who sports pants and a pageboy and straddles a horse with the best of her lords. She straddles a few of her lords, too — most recently the self-satisfied Magnus (Ian Keith) — and silences criticism about her unmarried status by remarking that she won't die an old maid, but a bachelor. Yet despite being brilliant and independent, Christina is also woefully jaded and oppressed by the strictures of her office. Like all rulers, she's very lonely, although she doesn't believe in the reality of true love.

While out riding one snowy day, she meets a Spanish envoy headed for her court and ends up stranded with him at an inn. In a perfectly marvelous (though entirely unbelievable) scene, they forge a bond of intellectual and spiritual affinity while the Spaniard, Antonio (John Gilbert), labors under the belief that Christina is of his own gender and social standing. (Personally, I think the false eyelashes would have tipped me off, but one is apt to be confused in a foreign land.) The situation becomes critical when the innkeeper asks the chums to bunk together for the night, but what could have been an international scandal blooms into a meeting of souls (and bodies) and a bliss the young sovereign thought impossible. This central episode is intensely erotic in a distinctly un-modern way, and Garbo is a vision of rapture.

Antonio's mission is to deliver a proposal of marriage from the king of Spain, which is only one obstacle to his relationship with the queen. On her side, she is pressed to wed her cousin, a war hero, and to spurn all advances from Catholic outsiders, while jealous Magnus waits in the wings. Now dressed in jewels and gowns (having tapped into a woman's emotion), Garbo still evinces a resolve as strong as her desire, and the run-ins that lead to her eventual decision are thrilling displays of Christina's power. But do the dictates of duty and Fate allow her to possess what she wants most? Let history record its version of Christina's life; the movie offers its own majestic conclusion.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.