Trailer
Plot summary
Crowned at six after her father Gustavus Adolphus died in the Thirty Years' War, Christina now governs Sweden while the war continues and casualties mount on both sides. She argues for peace, and she sometimes dresses as a man to be taken seriously. Her councilors press her to marry her cousin Karl Gustav and produce an heir; Count Magnus, the Lord Treasurer, believes he has a claim on her affection. Wanting to escape the restrictions of royal life, she leaves the capital and stops at an inn, where she shares a room with Antonio, an envoy from King Philip of Spain who takes her for a man and has no idea who she is.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Frank McGlynn Jr.as 2nd Rabble Rouser (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Queen Christina (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- British actor Laurence Olivier was set to make his American film debut as the Spaniard Antonio, but his screen test was unimpressive and he failed to form a genuine rapport with Greta Garbo, so the role went to John Gilbert, who had a long professional and personal relationship with her.
- Unlike the film, in which falling in love brings Queen Christina into conflict with her court, the real Christina of Sweden abdicated because she was determined not to marry, to live as she pleased, and to openly convert to Catholicism.
- Greta Garbo was troubled by the film's historical inaccuracies, writing to a friend: "Just imagine Christina abdicating for the sake of a little Spaniard", and she dreaded the reaction to the picture from her fellow Swedes.
- The real Christina was devoted to her maid of honor and "bedfellow" Ebba Sparre, but the film shows only two chaste kisses between the women and blocks any romance by having Christina interrupt Ebba with Count Jakob on a staircase before she leaves for Antonio.
- Director Rouben Mamoulian called the bedroom sequence, in which Christina commits to memory the room where she slept with Antonio, "a sonnet", telling Greta Garbo before shooting that the moment had to be sheer poetry and feeling, like a dance done to music.
- The film is credited with disproving the rumor that John Gilbert's lack of success in the sound era was because he had an unsuitable voice.
