La rinuncia

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.

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.

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.

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).

Though not as regal and alluring as Greta Garbo in her heavily fictionalized biography Queen Christina, Liv Ullmann gives us a different Christina. In The Abdication Liv Ullmann gives us a woman who is seized by her new religion, but her new religion doesn't know quite what to make of her.

It's 1655 and this film kind of takes off where Garbo's Queen Christina ended. Liv's already abdicated and she's arrived at the Papal Court, traveling incognito with only her former dwarf jester Michael Dunn accompanying her.

Eager and willing she arrives saying she's to be a servant of Roman Catholicism. Maybe in the next couple of centuries she would have been welcomed no questions asked. But this was the 17th century the age of the Reformation and Counter Reformation. Religion and politics blended so well in Europe the line was almost erased.

We have to examine her to see if her conversion is sincere. So a dying Pope appoints Cardinal Decio Azzolini played by Peter Finch as a committee of one to examine her as to the truthfulness of her conversion.

There have been many rumors about Queen Christina down the centuries. Her father Gustavus Adolphus brought her up as a ruling monarch to be meaning that a lot of what was considered strictly masculine in those times was open to her. She was educated and also learned the arts of war. Rumors then and now have said she was a lesbian.

But other rumors have her and Cardinal Azzolini as lovers and these are the rumors dealt with here. Finch talks a lot about his temptations in those directions as well. Celibacy is a mighty taskmaster and then and now discreetly not followed.

A lot of the scenes between Ullmann and Finch are what drags this film down somewhat. Just a lot blabbering dialog about religion. Some of the best scenes are the flashbacks that Ullmann narrates about her life. Cyril Cusack as Count Oxenstierna who ruled Sweden in her minority turns in a memorable performance.

The atmosphere of 17th century Rome specifically the Vatican was well done also. The Abdication ain't good history, but passably good drama.