Queen Christina (film)

Queen Christina is a preCode Hollywood biographical film, produced in 1933 by Walter Wanger and directed by Rouben Mamoulian. It stars Swedishborn actress Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in their fourth and last film together.

The film was directed by Rouben Mamoulian in 1933, and written by H. M. Harwood and Salka Viertel, with dialogue by S. N. Behrman, based on a story by Salka Viertel and Margaret P. Levino. Leading roles are played by Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, whose career heavily declined with the rise of talkies. Garbo herself insisted on Gilbert as her costar. It was the fourth and the last time they starred together in the same film. Queen Christina was billed as Garbos return to cinema after an eighteenmonth hiatus. Prior to the shooting, while on holiday in Sweden, the actress read a treatment by Salka Viertel about the life of Christina and became interested in the story. At the time of shooting the film, Garbo was 28, the age of her character.Queen Christina is a historical costume drama, loosely based on the life of 17th century Queen Christina of Sweden and still more loosely of Stindbergs history play Kristina.. Apart from her, a number of other authentic historical characters appear in the film, such as Charles X Gustav of Sweden and Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie. Some events that took place in history, like the Thirty Years War, are represented in the work, although Queen Christina is not a film closely depicting facts. In this historical fiction account, Queen Christina of Sweden falls in love during her reign but has to deal with the political realities of her society. In real life, Christinas main reason for abdication was her determination not to marry and to be able to convert to Catholicism. Another fictionalized, if not entirely fictitious, element is the romantic affair between Christina and Antonio. However, the queens habit of dressing as a man in order to broaden the options available to her as a person is clearly marked in the film I shall die a bachelor she declares, wears manly clothes and even disguises herself as a man. The only concession to the real Christinas sexuality were some subtle hints that the film character was romantica

Source: Wikipedia