PERSONAL TRIUMPH

Evening Star, Issue 21828, 18 September 1934, Page 10

PERSONAL TRIUMPH

GARBO'S ‘QUEEN CHRISTINA’ A striking object lesson of the heights the cinema is capable of reaching when acting of the first-class is combined with intelligent production and superb photography will be seen in the latest Greta Garbo film, ‘ Queen Christina,’ which comes to the St. James Theatre on Friday. If the film is a personal triumph for Garbo, it is also a triumph for Mamoulian. the director, and for the _ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, where it was made. It represents, probably, one of the purely commercial cinema’s closest approaches to the presentation of great dramatic art through the medium of the screen. * Queen Christina ’ is Garbo’s picture, but it has been constructed to give her the stage without straining to keep the rest of the cast out of the limelight. Mamoulian understands the dangers of the “ star system,” and where the other characters demand it he does not hesitate to give . them, due prominence. John Gilbert (the Spanish ambassador). Lewis Stone (the chancellor), and half a dozen others step into the light at intervals with admirable definition, not merely as foils to the star, but as integral parts of the tragedy. Basically the story of a queen who sacrifices her throne for love, the film actually gives a picture of a character unfitted for the loneliness and isolation of supreme power, Christina, the film says, was an individual, then a woman, and then a queen. That she chose a woman’s reason for leaving her throne was only a matter of convenience. Long before she met the Spanish ambassador she was chafing at the restrictions imposed on her by her duty, to her country*