The story of the eccentric seventeenth-century Swedish Queen Christina, who wore men's clothing all her life, refused to marry, and abdicated the throne at age 28, is embellished into a witty and elegant romance by the inventive direction of Rouben Mamoulian, and a minutely sensitive performance by Greta Garbo. Tom Milne writes (in “Mamoulian”): “Queen Christina is unique in that its script is perfectly suited to, and its director perfectly understood, that peculiar Garbo mystique which Kenneth Tynan pinned down so neatly....: ‘Most actresses in action live only to look at men, but Garbo looks at flowers, clouds, and furniture with the same admiring compassion, like Eve on the morning of creation....' And Queen Christina is, precisely, the story of a woman who grows up in the belief that the world is a place of solitude, then suddenly discovers the power to communicate with its enchantment.”
Escaping a Parliament clamouring for war, Christina, disguised as a roguish male, takes off for the snowy isolation of a country inn, where she is asked to share the one available room with the Spanish ambassador (John Gilbert). She agrees, taking a lusty delight in the comedy of mistaken gender and identity which ensues. Inside the chamber, however, passion takes a more transcendent turn in the famous silent sequence (shot, according to Mamoulian, to the beat of a metronome) in which Christina puts their love nest to memory by caressing everything in it. (JB)