When Greta Garbo made Queen Christina for MGM in 1933, she was at the height of her powers. International stardom had given her unprecedented control over her career. A new contract with the studio assured her consultation on story material and a veto over the directors of her films.
The story of Christina, the seventeenth-century queen of Sweden forced to choose between her private and public life, was ideally suited to Garbo's image. Indeed, Christina's eventual abdication was uncannily prophetic of Garbo's sudden withdrawal from the cinema only eight years after this film.
The role called for the expression of an intense eroticism, and the mysteriously compelling sexuality continues to fascinate both male and female audiences. Marcia Landy and Amy Villarejo explore this with great subtlety, showing the ways in which power and gender impose contradictory pressures.