Queen Christina

Christina, Queen of Sweden, was raised as a boy, rides in men's clothes and refuses to marry. In a snowstorm at an inn she meets the Spanish envoy, who takes her for a young man. Once the affair begins, the question is not love but whether the crown will permit it. The film is not interested in historical accuracy. It is interested in a woman's right to choose her own life: Christina's decision to leave the throne is made not as an escape but as the only honest option. The form is built around a star. Rouben Mamoulian keeps turning the camera to Greta Garbo's face, and most scenes resolve on her reaction. Two of its stories are famous. The first is casting: Laurence Olivier was tried opposite her, Garbo froze in their scenes, it did not work, and she insisted that her former lover John Gilbert be brought in. Gilbert's career had collapsed by then, and the part gave him a way back. The second is the ending. When Garbo asked what she should express in the final shot, Mamoulian told her: nothing, absolutely nothing. Make your face a mask, do not even blink. The result is one of the most discussed closing shots in cinema, a face on which the audience writes its own story. Who it is for: viewers who love Garbo and thirties studio drama. Who it is not for: anyone curious about the real Christina. The film treats her history very freely.