The Abdication

Queen Christina of Sweden (Liv Ullmann) abdicated her throne in 1654. After converting to Catholicism, she travels to Rome to prove herself to the Pope. The Pope is dying. Cardinal Azzolino (Peter Finch) is assigned to evaluate her.

Liv Ullmann is a charismatic beauty. It is a small movie despite its grand locations. I struggle to figure out Christina and her interior personal story for the first hour. This version takes her disputed sexuality to be celibacy. In this way, this is more about the power dynamics within marriages at this time and her religious conversion. It speaks to the changing power dynamics between the sexes in the 70's.

A film of suppressed emotions about suppressed sexuality, but more than that, about the nature of love and the power of giving oneself to another, and the tragedy of being unable to. This is a beautiful film, both in how it looks, and how it thinks, it is unrelentingly heartbreaking. Ullman is somehow mesmeric, you can't take your eyes off her, you feel her pain in all its rawness and wonder how one human being can endure so much. Finch's character is a support to hers, it is almost like you care for him only inasmuch as his actions affect her.

This is a movie that will take your breath away, it is profoundly moving (I know what that sounds like but it is).

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 ****

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.