As a condition of renewing her contract with MGM, and having immense leverage in negotiations, Garbo, the Swedish actress, stipulated that she star as Christina, the seventeenth-century Swedish queen, in this lavish production. Coming to power during the Thirty Years’ War, the monarch is depicted as a selfless ruler for whom romance is never a consideration until she meets an envoy from the Spanish King. Curiously, censors quite vocally objected to scenes in which Garbo dressed as a man and kissed a woman, a very different reaction to Dietrich’s similar, headline-grabbing activities in Morocco, of which this was surely an imitation.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.

Screening as part of the Dietrich X Garbo Season.