Queen Christina (Mamoulian, 1933): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm
Funeral Parade Queer Film Society presents Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina, a historical biopic stars Greta Garbo as a bisexual, cross-dressing monarch.
Time Out review:
On the face of it, this is the usual historical hogwash, made to the
traditional recipe (prepare a literate but daft script around the
concepts of love, honour and duty; stir in two gooey-eyed stars, one of
whom may be miscast and a bad wearer of costumes; bring to the boil,
stirring in teaspoonfuls of C Aubrey Smith, rhubarbing peasants, snow, ducks, and Gothic lettering; serve with naive music). But Queen Christina
is lifted far above its origins, partly by Mamoulian (who moulds
potentially stodgy scenes with his finicky regard to detail), and partly
by Garbo herself: she turns her character into a living entity,
extracts real emotion from the script's purple clumps ('Snow is like a
wild sea. One can go and get lost in it...'), and glides through
Mamoulian's winding camera movements with grace, wit and beauty. She
plays the 17th century Queen of Sweden, whose career comes unstuck when
she falls for the Spanish Ambassador (a touching but inadequate
performance from John Gilbert, her old cohort from the silents).
Geoff Brown
Here (and above) is the trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment