The Abdication

This movie was one I hadn't seen until it appeared on TCM. Great acting talents are on display with the two leading characters, Peter Finch and Liv Ullman. Queen Christina appears as a very confused woman with sexual quirks that seem to dominate her performance combined with her obsession to be seen by the Pope. Apparently she suffered from an affliction that possibly makes her better understood which some viewers were clearly aware of. I did find Peter Finch's performance more impressive, asking questions of the Queen, which she didn't expect, as if the Church would bow to her title and immediately agree to her demand. Finch, who portrays a Cardinal (a Prince of the Church) is clearly a power within the Vatican, who is determined she will not see the Pope unless he is convinced of her sincerity. He is very stoic in the presence of the Queen despite her harangues. But he is also mesmerized. The halls and chambers of the Vatican are well displayed with Cardinals huddling among themselves as the Queen and Cardinal spar over her audience with the Holy Father. There is a dramatic change towards the end which will surprise some viewers. This is a very impressive take on Vatican politics at the time of the Counter-Reformation.

This film was shown once on local TV in the early 1980s (but I was too young to watch it) and then fell completely off the radar in the interim; however, thanks to the God-sent overhaul that TCM UK has finally decided to give its long-decaying schedule of endlessly-repeated titles, I was able to finally catch up with it after some 25 odd years! Not because the film has any kind of reputation per se but its credentials are certainly impeccable and European History has always been one of my favorite subjects in school (and one in which I excelled in). The story of Sweden's Queen Christina had already been dealt with magnificently by Rouben Mamoulian in his eponymous 1933 film which had provided Greta Garbo with arguably her greatest role; this being made a good 40 permissive years later, the independent-minded Protestant monarch (Liv Ullmann) renounces her faith and throne to sneak into the Vatican and pour out her lesbian longings for a childhood friend onto a Roman Catholic Cardinal (Peter Finch) engaged to investigate her well-documented wanton ways and her newly-professed piety! The two stars, reunited a year after Ross Hunter's maligned 1973 musical version of LOST HORIZION, are practically the whole show here despite being surrounded by opulent sets and a cast of thespian notables: Cyril Cusack (as Christina's guardian), Graham Crowden (as a fellow Cardinal), Edward Underdown and Kathleen Byron (as, respectively, Christina's chivalrous father and embittered mother) and diminutive Michael Dunn (in his last film as Christina's enigmatic servant). Celebrated cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shoots the opening abdication scenes in moody candlelight, bathes the film in mist during Christina's childhood reminiscences and lends it a sunny look during her liberated passages; Nino Rota's music score is also appropriately sensitive or soaring according to the film's moods. Incidentally, another failed historical/religious charade featuring Liv Ullmann I would like to see is Michael Anderson's POPE JOAN (1972)…who knows if TCM UK will likewise surprise me and provide the opportunity to catch up with it in the not-too-distant future?

After Greta Garbo abdicated as Queen Christina of Sweden, she caroused through Europe for a year and finally came to Rome, where she expected to be instructed in Catholicism by the Pope. Somewhere along the way, however, she had become Liv Ullman, and now had to pass Peter Finch as Cardinal Azzolino. Is she sincere?

Peter Finch plays his role as if he's Laurence Harvey: dry, repressed, intellectual and prosecutorial, while Miss Ullman dances around him, serious and light-hearted, all over the shop emotionally. It's just the sort of movie that Anthony Harvey had directed with A LION IN WINTER. If the fireworks are not as spectacular, well, neither are the lead actors as big on the screen as Hepburn and O'Toole. This pair play guarded characters who show through in flashes, and must compete not only with their own natural beauty, but the spectacular location shots. It's a movie that requires a dedicated and attentive viewer.

I can see how it must have worked sensationally as a two-actor play by Ruth Wilson. When she opened the script slightly for the big screen, did a fine job. However the results fall slightly short of the director's earlier masterpiece. It's a fine movie, but definitely not one to watch on a small screen.

In the 17th century, Queen Christina of Sweden gives up her Protestant throne and journeys to Rome to embrace Catholicism; her past (possibly chequered) as well as her present motives are examined closely by a Cardinal, with whom she falls in love. Ruth Wolff's adaptation of her play is interesting and literate, but director Anthony Harvey unfortunately strives to make a grand spectacle out of what is basically an intimate two-character stage drama (and so we get stand-alone location shots of cathedrals and castles photographed from all different angles). Christina, having been raised since girlhood with a crown on her head, was apparently brought up like a boy, and so Liv Ullmann has been encouraged to be belligerent and impolite (it works for a while, and the lowering of her voice is initially an exciting change for the actress). Peter Finch is unobtrusive as Cardinal Azzolino; he stays out of Ullmann's way, acknowledging her speeches with pensive little smiles (much the same way Finch did in his scenes with Ullmann the year before in "Lost Horizon"). The film certainly had possibilities as a moving platonic-romance story, but it just misses. Nino Rota's ornate score is too insistent (it draws attention to itself), while the flashbacks to Christina's unhappy life back in Sweden begin to feel like speedbumps. Ullmann's Christina becomes too weepy and 'womanly' after declaring her love for Cardinal Finch, though their final scene together is actually quite lovely, meaning the movie does work on occasion. ** from ****

I will never forget my first impressions while watching this movie so many years ago on TV. I absolutely loved it!! I was riveted to the screen by this complicated and multi-faceted person in history who I had here-to-fore never heard about.

This movie belongs right there with other historical classics produced from the 50's to the 70's. I still remember being absolutely fascinated by Liv Ullmann's performance. What a colorful character Queen Christina of Sweden was - but Liv Ullmann made her come alive with her portrayal of an OCD personality that gave me my first introduction into a disorder that I had previously never known about. I don't know if the real Christina had OCD or not, but that was what I remembered most about the movie. I would love to see it again.