Directed with a loving feminist slant by Rouben Mamoulian, the movie follows the rise and abdication of Christina, the first Queen of Sweden who ascends to the throne at the age of five when her father is killed on the battlefield. At her coronation, we see the young Christina (nicely played by child actor Cora Sue Collins) with glimpses of the spirit that she will carry into adulthood especially in a moment when she deviates from her prepared preamble.Then we jump forward in time and meet Christina as a breathtaking beauty somewhere in her late twenties (Garbo was 28 at the time). She stands out in her court, not just because she is queen but because her point of view is so different. The men who occupy her court are passionate in their insistence that Sweden should make a violent conquest against their European enemies. Christina is dead-set against it, she will not send her countrymen onto the fields of battle to die for selfish conquest. Her perspective is that she would prefer to see her subjects embrace peace and love and passion and art, a lust for life rather than a testosterone-fueled lust for blood.We understand why. We see that Christina is a woman who wants to examine all aspects of love and passion and has no desire to fill the expected trappings of her gender or her position. She wears men's clothing, she has affairs, and she speaks to men face to face, not just as a woman speaking to a man. She delights her subjects by having many affairs to the degree that they place bets on how many lovers she has had.Early in the film we see her in the late stages of an affair with one of her court officers. More alarming are the fleeting glances to suggest that she is carrying on a lesbian affair with the Countess Ebba Sparre (played by Elizabeth Young a.k.a. Mrs. Joseph Mankiewicz) in a scene that is handled only with a light kiss on the lips but we sense that there is one thing that eludes her, the efficacies of true love. In moments of true happiness, there is a light in her eyes, a spark that only comes from self-discovery. For a star so famously elusive, it is striking that we are seeing her face so open, so curious. There is passion and wonderment just under the surface. This is a woman with a lust for life.Her fortunes begin to change one night in a town tavern which the Queen visits disguised as a man. She wants to view her subjects at ground level and just enjoy a night out without anyone at her feet. At the Inn she is privy to a conversation among the drunks over how many lovers the queen has had in the past year. "Six!" one says, "Nine!" says another and a donnybrook erupts. She breaks up the argument with the proclamation that the queen has had twelve, "A round dozen", she tells them which is greeted with applause.Someone else in the tavern can't help but admire her spirit. He is Antonio (Garbo's real-life lover John Gilbert), a visiting Spanish Envoy who is delighted by this "young man" and they spend a delightful evening getting to know one another. We are suppose to be convinced that Antonio is unaware that Christina is a woman but we kind of have to go along with it – there is simply NO WAY that a woman as gorgeous as Greta Garbo could ever be mistaken for a man. When it comes time to turn in, Antonio is kind of delighted to learn that the inn is full and that he will be forced to share a room with this "man". The Queen has only to remove her cape to reveal her true gender – I love the amused look on her face, her eyes cast to the floor as he discovers her.Antonio and Christina spend several days making love and afterwards we are invited into one of the most beautiful sequences ever put on film, lying at his feet she is fed grapes from his hacienda. She gets up and begins touching the objects in the room, a candle, a spinning wheel, a painting and of course the bed in which she rests her cheek on one of the pillows and the camera catches a glowing, almost ethereal image of her lovely face as she remembers the previous few days. This is a woman who is not overtaken by her passion, but who carries her passions and embraces every inch these earthly pleasures. She does not play a victim, or a victimizer, this is simply a woman uncovering the passions that lie within her.I love when Antonio tells her, "We're inevitable". There is a look between them that doesn't suggest two actors playing a scene but two people locked at the soul who are simply caught up in one another. What will carry us through the rest of the film is whether or not Christina can give up her reign to remain in Antonio's arms. Will she give up the country that adores her for the man who loves her? It is inevitable that she will have to make that choice but for me the strength of Queen Christina doesn't lie in the third act – though it contains the most famous final shot in movie history – rather in Garbo's confident performance as a woman for whom life is one discovery after another. This is one of the most complete characters in the early years of the cinema, a specific person with a lust for life.

Refugees from the silent screen – they were a mixed bunch. Greta Garbo, sublimely beautiful and supremely confident, her Swedish accent and husky delivery complementing the mysterious persona she had cultivated in the silents, was a natural survivor. John Gilbert, fulfilling a very 1920s ideal of handsomeness, with a voice like a squeezebox in high register, was not faring so well. Still, the kind-hearted Garbo had lobbied for her old friend and silent-era co-star to make an appearance opposite her in Queen Christina, thus providing us with a final chance to see them together, even now their careers had long since diverged.Queen Christina is part of an early-30s wave of historical pictures set in Eastern Europe. When it came to "pre-code" raunchiness the more upmarket studios like MGM and Paramount eschewed the jails and dancehalls of Warner Brothers in favour of frisky period dramas. This picture deals brazenly with the queen's supposed promiscuity as well as hinting at her rumoured bisexuality. In spite of the regal gloss it's actually a rather silly business. At one point we see Garbo casually firing a musket ball into the ceiling to break up a quarrel over how many lovers she's had. Eventually, and against all odds, a trite yet rather touching love story emerges. This gives the story a bit of direction, although perhaps it would have been better had it allowed to simply wander into the truly bizarre (cf. The Scarelt Empress). As one might expect, historical accuracy is only an occasional visitor to the screenplay, but that's hardly the point is it? The director is Hollywood's resident technique geek Rouben Mamoulian. Mamoulian's extrovert style is just about starting to come together, and yet he still shows a penchant for all things showy. Here he continually bookends his scenes with lengthy and largely superfluous tracking shots, which might be OK if they weren't so wobbly. He's also a lover of theatrical and stylised crowd movements, such as the synchronised manner in which the group of peasants turn their heads to one another after Garbo puts a question to them. Such things are great for musicals, but look silly in dramas. Mamoulian's greatest strength here is really is his eye for the iconic, with such fine compositions as the shot of Garbo and Gilbert's first kiss before the fire.Still, Garbo was an actor who always seemed impervious to bad or indifferent direction. When acting queenly, she shows her usual steely immobility, the occasional flash of an eyebrow adding emphasis. Here and there she is mocking, almost playful, and you feel through her that there was a good atmosphere on the set for this one. And yes, her rapport with Gilbert is alive and well. The washed-up actor still has those deep, deep, silent movie peepers, and his voice doesn't sound quite so froggy as it did with the poor recording of his first few talkies (although there is one bizarre moment later in the movie where he gets in a sleigh, and it sounds like he just sat on a duck). It's a pity this was his penultimate screen appearance, as it's possibly his best. Had he been able to hold on a few more years he could have even made a slightly aged Errol Flynn type. Other players to look out for in Queen Christina are the ever-watchable C. Aubrey Smith and a pre-fame Akim Tamiroff as Pedro, seen weeping with palpable emotion in the final scene.All in all, while not a great talkie, Queen Christina is at least a good reminder of the silent screen's glories. The dialogue is not conspicuously bad, and is even rather nifty in places, but it is of little consequence, never driving things forward. Ultimately it is upon the haunting faces of Garbo and Gilbert that the drama is played out.

If you really want to see Garbo's greatest performance, greatest role, and greatest movie, THIS is it. This movie will delight you thoroughly, tug at your heartstrings, and leave you helplessly bedazzled by the greatest actress of her age.There isn't a false note or wasted moment in this masterpiece of a film. John Gilbert, Garbo's true love in real life, plays her beloved in this movie. Both stars create fireworks and warmth, and both conjure up an unforgettable screen romance.Forget all the slick CGI flicks and the thin, over-hyped blockbusters endlessly served up to audiences today. This movie grabs you from the very first scene, and never lets you go. Garbo's power and presence and brilliant acting dominate the film and make a thrilling story even more memorable.You won't regret watching this film -- I guarantee that!

How ironic that back to back I saw what I considered to be the weakest Garbo I've seen ("Anna Karenina"), and the best, "Queen Christina." This is truly one of the great Hollywood films and the finest performance Garbo ever gave. She is brilliant as queen of her native Sweden, a role she was meant for. It's got an excellent cast with her finest co-star, John Gilbert, who co-starred in many of her silent films. The studios destroyed Gilbert by spreading the rumor (as they did with Louise Brooks) that his voice recorded badly. This was totally untrue. His voice in this movie is full-bodied and strong. He and Garbo have screen chemistry to burn. There is a love scene where Garbo walks around studying the room at an inn where she and Gilbert fell in love (He: "What are you doing?" She: "I'm remembering") that has got to rank as one of the most romantic and curiously strange of any to come out of the Hollywood dream machine. And ultimately, the film has that justifiably famous final and luminous shot of Garbo on the deck of a ship looking out to sea as she sails off to her destiny without the man she loves. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, it has some of the most beautiful cinematography of the period. There's a single shot (a matte painting) of queen Garbo walking through the corridor of the castle at night that took my breath away. I went back and re-watched it a number of times. Wow! Masterful direction. This is the one Garbo film not to miss. Can't recommend it highly enough.